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An (Imperfect) Solution for USB-C Devices Without PD

You Know, Those Who Need USB-A on the Other End

I just listened to the latest episode of the Upgrade podcast. It was Myke Hurley’s first episode after his parental leave – and as someone who got my first child less than a week ago, the episode obviously resonated with me.

I intend to write a bit about some baby tech – but here I just wanted to throw out a quick recommendation for an annoyance Myke brought up.

(Click here to jump straight to the solution!)

USB-C is great – but also a lie

The good thing about “everything” being USB-C, is that every cable fits into every socket. However, the problem is that you suddenly don’t always know if things will work. For instance, what’s the maximum amount of charging a cable can give? And when do you need a Thunderbolt cable? And how can you tell what a cable is?

In the Upgrade episode, Myke mentioned another issue: If the USB-C device doesn’t include everything that’s needed for USB-C Power Delivery, the USB-C cable might need to be USB-A on the other end.

For instance, this is the case with the, otherwise great, Anbernic RG35XX_ 🖇️ retro hand-held. If I connect it to my 140W charger, with a powerful USB-C to USB-C cable, it gets “scared” (because it doesn’t have the smarts to ask for less power), and doesn’t want to charge. However, if it senses a USB-A on the other end, it knows that it can’t draw too much power, so it “dares” to charge.1

This is nothing but poor design from the device maker, as giving it the necessary smarts is both cheap and easy – but it’s still something one encounters from time to time.

The most obvious solution …

… is to simply buy a USB-A charger that you then use for those specific devices. And this is what Myke said he had done, for the multiple baby tech devices needing special treatment. But then you need to both have a custom cable for these devices and a custom charger. (By “charger” I mean the actual charging brick, not including the cable.)

There’s a (slightly) better way!

However, I really want to streamline things, and only deal with chargers with USB-C ports. The answer is an adapter, like this:

A USB-A mouse, with an adapter to USB-C lying next to it.
The adapter connected. It doesn't make the plug much larger.
Images from this blog post, about why you don't need USB-A ports on your desktop computer.

What you can do, is the following:

It’s not a perfect solution… It’s still annoying, and I hope device makers stop being stupid. But you do move from needing both a bespoke cable and charger, and to “only” needing a bespoke cable.

  1. At least this is how I roughly think it works. ↩︎