It baffled me when I first actually examined a laptop that used USB-C natively to discover that its power adapter didn’t use a removable USB-C cable. I’d just assumed implicitly that they would, because obviously you would do it that way since the cables are so frail and always fail long before the brick, and lots of people would like to be able to use a different-length cable.
So far I haven’t had an A–C or C–C cable last for even six months, with not particularly stressful usage. Nor have I had an A–Micro-B cable last much beyond a year in the longest case (normally much less). In all cases, they become unreliable. I’ve tried quite a few different brands by this point, mostly on the cheaper side of things but not all, and have observed no significant difference between cheap and expensive. They all fail.
Does anyone make cables that don’t fall apart ridiculously quickly, failing at the cable/plug junction or within the Micro-B plug?
DC barrel jacks, they fail eventually too, but they’ve at least tended to last two to four years, which is slightly less absurd. My current ASUS laptop’s barrel jack became unreliable after a year and a half in a way novel to me: the metal of the jack has been etched by the latching mechanism in the laptop, to the point that it no longer works if sitting forwards or backwards, only up or down (the less common, and thus less etched, orientations for me), or if you unseat its latching by pull it out a fraction of a millimetre.
What are you doing with your cables?
On the topic of connectors, I still think Apple’s lightning connector is the most robust connection the industry has enjoyed in recent times, and most robust for its size ever. I’m sad that iPhones are going the way of USB-C.
There’s still the dust catching port on the iPhone itself but avoiding the cable having a dust cavity is a huge win.
Plugging and unplugging things up to a few times per day. Occasionally using a phone while plugged in. Using a laptop in a lap. These last two will occasionally produce mild lateral stress. The cable will occasionally (like, every few weeks at most) experience mild tension due to moving a device while the cable is mildly snagged, and on rare occasions they have experienced more extreme jerking tension (and this was likely a factor in my most recent cable’s failure, but most of the cables that have failed have never experienced anything like this). As far as twisting: most of the cables have been used just on a desk or similar (other than when the connected device is being held), only rarely being moved (once every few months, at most), at which time it’s coiled with a radius of at least 15cm.
Seriously, these cables are not often being abused, and a couple of them have even absolutely always been treated very gently (and accordingly they’ve failed in the Micro-B connector), and I’ve heard similar stories from others. No one’s laptop power cables last more than five years, that I’ve heard. The slight flexing that you get from completely normal use is enough to do them all in.
As for Micro-B connectors, they’re supposed to be rated for 10,000 insert/remove cycles, but I’ve never had one last even 2,000 cycles before starting to become unreliable in the connector (… if it hasn’t already become unreliable in the cable/connector junction), even for a cable that was always used in ideal circumstances (gently plugged in, resting on a table). Accordingly, when I read cycle rating numbers for hardware, I start by dividing by ten, then maybe it’s reasonable.
I suppose I should also mention that I do have two very short A–C and A–Micro-B charging cables that are generally used less than once a week which have lasted for 2–2½ years so far and are still fine. But that doesn’t count since it’s not anything like daily usage.
These are all reasonable failure cases in my opinion: 1) incompetently homemade cables, 2) an individual traumatic incident, and 3) extended use in harsh outdoor conditions. Apart from that, I've never had any cables fail, even the notoriously frail Apple cables.
I always hear that Apple cables are prone to falling apart but I’ve had USB-C chargers for my laptop since 2017, carried them around everywhere, didn’t baby them, and they’re mostly fine. They’re kinda yellow and brown now instead of white but that’s the worst of it. Genuinely not sure if I’m doing something different or if I’ve been lucky or what.
USB-C has similar ranges of build quality, but you also want to avoid picking your phone up by the cable etc.
You are doing something to your cables. Even my cheapest of cheap micro b cables have lasted 6ish years. I don't think I've ever had a premium cable fail on me.
Are you overly bending them or coiling them too tightly?
I hate to blame the user, but if all cables are failing then maybe you're being too rough with them? I hate to suggest that because I've had cables fail despite receiving no abuse; Apple's old magsafe cables were notorious for this and the fanboys even more notorious for always blaming the user. It's possible you've had bad luck with cables and weren't mistreating any of them. It has been my experience that some cables deteriorate despite not being abused, but other cables put up with a lot of abuse.
Apple's cables work fine too but they of course eventually get worn down at the ends and eventually need to be replaced. I also tried Aukey, but their cables stopped working for me after a month or two. I had them replaced under warranty twice and all three times it stopped working within a month or two.
So at least for cables I use with higher wattage adapters I exclusively use Anker & Apple USB-C cables now.
Apple macbook air cables have been rock solid though.
They don't want to have to deal with customer support cases from people who tried to charge their laptop over a $5 cable from amazon.
The cables that keep dying for me are the short, expensive, full speed thunderbolt cables for my dock. Those start glitching out once a year. But the 100W charging cables are fine.
I have had apple chargers fail in the second year of operation.
But I bet it would run pretty hot and loud if I toyed around with stable diffusion and a bunch more containers.
And then there are aboslute units like the Razor Blade 18 with 330W power adapter: https://www.razer.com/gaming-laptops/razer-blade-18 (13th gen i9 with RTX 4090)
My laptop sports a RTX 3080. That's probably the main driver for such max power needs.
Obviously Geforce Now doesn't incur in more power draw as it delegates running games to the cloud.
My point is that laptops with 90W adapters can get too hot to comfortably touch, I think at 180W you're well past the point where actually using it on your lap is advisable.
Apple likes sealed products that obsolesce in place. Framework likes the computer of Theseus approach.
Apple will have to start re-considering their approach though.. the EU has now mandated that phones need to start introducing replaceable batteries, etc.
There has been far too much e-waste. Why should one have to purchase an entirely new phone just because the battery wore out?
If you stress-test everything to the max (Turbo Mode CPU+GPU, max power draw, while playing a game at 120fps) then yes, you can draw 150+ watts and it's too hot to safely have on your lap. But you can set it on a table and still use it comfortably. (The keyboard/trackpad never gets hot)
Notably, being able to choose which mode you want anytime is super useful. (I can turn this into a respectable gaming rig at a moment's notice, and it weighs less than a 16' MacBook Pro. I can also flip a switch and it's basically an ultrabook with 7 hours of battery life and silent fans -- or I can run it all day off a tiny 65watt USB-C charger in the office in that mode)
Having a high-watt charger means you have the option to use that electricity, not that you are required to do so.
You're mixing up thermal energy and temperature. Consider that you can easily burn yourself on a 60W soldering iron, but it'd be quite hard to do so on a 1500W oil-filled space heater.
This is the one case (AFAIK) where input power isn't being converted to some kind of heat: it's being stored in the battery as energy for latter.
I would hope that the power management settings have options to limit the power usage/heat output that can be enabled when using it on your lap.
TL;DR yes, burning a constant 180W on your lap isn't good, but having this capability adds many valuable use cases.
If your processor only maxes up to 40w, it doesn't matter if the laptop supplies 200w or 1000w. It won't run any hotter.
A laptop is hot to the touch because it has hot components (eg a processor running at full throttle) and fails to dissipate that heat correctly.
That is mostly divorced from it's power consumption.
If you ran a large robotic arm off your laptop, you'd be using a lot of watts but making only a bit of heat.
What I was missing is the part where the laptop doesn't consume 180W and a substantial fraction of that power is just passing through the laptop to peripherals.
I’ve had temperature drops of over 15 degrees c by opting for Liquid Metal, everything else being same.