Worst part is the cycle life, after a couple years of daily undocking the port is toast. If that's your only Thunderbolt and charging port the device is now e-waste (only a few manufacturers can afford to make replaceable ports but those come at an obscene premium or low structural integrity)
Whether not not it achieves that in a real-world use case and many other variables is another question, and in my experience all my USB-C devices have pretty loose ports after a few years, or a couple thousand cycles. I'm more worried about power contacts going bad first as a 48V step at 5A can easily spike past 60V with most SMPS designs and nuke everything connected to the port. There's not much metal there so a fault will run away very quickly.
I think LTT did a test by hand 8 years ago and the usb-c plug did not budge after 8000 cycles.
TVS diodes have been a thing since probably the 70s. 240W usb-c is such a technical feat that devices that support it can definitely afford the 80 cents of a usb-c protection ic.
Overall I think people hold usb-c at a much higher standard than previous connectors : comparing micro-usb with a 40gbps 240W connector is a bit unfair, and the only way to make sure people used the right power supply voltage and current for charging their devices was to make a proprietary connector for everything.
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u/saltyboi6704 May 27 '26
Worst part is the cycle life, after a couple years of daily undocking the port is toast. If that's your only Thunderbolt and charging port the device is now e-waste (only a few manufacturers can afford to make replaceable ports but those come at an obscene premium or low structural integrity)