UPDATE
Anker’s 6’ 5A PowerLine III USB-C is now available to order from amazon.com for $17.99 and should begin shipping immediately.
[New Release] 5A PowerLine III USB-C Now Available!
That price for a 100W cable 6ft is worth having.
Gets my buy recommendation, if it is $18 now I’d expect $14.49 - $14.99 shortly.
Most of us cannot benefit, but if you’re seeking to own fewest cables, the date this one ends in a draw unused is some years.
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Hello! Is there a listing for it in black (or will there be soon)? The link only has a white cable but this post’s cable is black. Super excited been waiting for this cable for a while!!
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Yes, the black version (and other lengths) are coming soon.
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Lifetime warranty too! Awesome
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But if a cable stops being used, so stops being bent, it will last much much longer. So basically lifetime = life of the context you bought the cable = longevity of the port type on all of your devices.
What is a good lifetime of a port type these days? 5 years? Say you used a cable every day twice, so 4 bends/day, 5 years = 7300 bends.
With USB 4 coming, 40Gbit everywhere, USB 100W 5A, this is one of the few cables you might still be using to charge with in 5 years, but this cable is not USB 4, so you’d probably only use it to charge something older 5 years from now, a device you’d not be using often, so the cable is not being moved often, not bending often…
My point - lifetime is a meaningless word in technology. Lifetime is a marketing word. Marketing is to get you pay extra $$$. What about the cheaper lifetimes cables Anker made, say, 2 years ago? … How are those lifetime warranty USB A to Micro B cables you paid extra $ for being bent daily now?
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Anker never offered any micro-USB cables with lifetime warranties, but I get your point. Lightning will be applicable soon.
The lifetime warranty will render meaningless well earlier than the end of an average lifespan. Still nice to have as it’s longer than 18 months.
Some people are probably waiting for a lifetime Thunderbolt 3 cable.
That makes more sense because Thunderbolt3 carries data, so an alternating current so causes induction which will ring off any resistance (Impedence).
But most here are thinking power, DC, so it simply has to conduct.
For a fun way to understand, if you’re bored:
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While I agree to an extent that the word lifetime is a marketing word used more and more nowadays, I’d rather have that than 18 warranty or 2 year warranty.
And as long as the lifetime warranty words don’t affect the price too much, I’m ok if they use it for marketing purposes
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… and so we get to why it is worth paying extra in the case of a C-C cable.
A Warranty is ultimately marketing, because if the cable fails, you are simply going to get a free replacement, a replacement you indirectly paid for in the initial purchase, the vendor factored the expected failure rate % into the price, so you paid for the word “warranty”.
I could buy 3 Amazon basics cables for the same cost of Anker cable, and so long as only 2 failed, it is the same cost.
So then we move it from warranty to reliability, and from there into travel, and particularly USB C. If you have to travel and carry 2 cables in case one fails, and if you had N port types, you need Nx2 cables, and if MicroB, A, C, Lightning, you end up with 2 of every cable type, so cable reliability = more weight + volume carrying. At home, it is irrelevant.
But if you push all cables to C-C, then you then need N+1, not Nx2, as you need only 1 spare cable, not 1 spare of each type.
So as C-C is agnostic, it is one of the few cables to be worth paying a bit extra for. Everything else, just pick 2 cheap ones and test the bad ones into the trash.
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OMG you guys even tagged me so that I would know the black one is available! Amazing - already ordered one!! Thanks!
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So this has got my thinking. Those that know me will be rolling on the floor laughing before reading the question…
So how many watts can my existing leads carry?
I’ve got a couple of PowerLine+ C to C and can’t find a speed rating for these.
Do I start using them as shoelaces and grab a couple of PowerLine III’s?
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60W (3A) is the default.
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Volts, Amps, Watts.
Watts = Volts x Amps.
So if you were to have a device which drew higher Voltage, you’d get more Watts.
The resistance, energy lost is I squared x R , so you’d lose less Watts if you dropped the Amps by using highest Voltage.
Power Delivery 60W+ are all 20V, at 60W that’s 3A and as the Watts goes up the current goes up, the cable gets warmer, the heat in the cable increases the resistance, that causes a Voltage drop and you hit a limit for the cable. That limit is higher at 20V than at say 15V.
Make sense?
To stop a cable melting, there is the E marker chip, before >3A is attempted to be drawn, the cable has to confirm it can… so you should never be able to get more than 60W out of a cable not designed explicitly for >60W.
But overall you’d get more from cables, they perform better at higher Voltages.
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Hey @professor thanks.
Yeah kind of, I do often read your posts with electrical info and understand a little 
.
I now understand how to work out how many watts a device draws/consumes.
I don’t have any high watt devices but this thread got me all excited about having an excuse to buy a “100w cable” but then the thought process changed to how many watts can my current leads carry.
@Insider quotes 60 watts for a standard USBC cable.
Think that more than covers any devices I currently have.
Think my phone can be charged at 25w, iPad and PowerCore I think is about 15w.
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I think if you get PD hub you’ll be needing the 100W cable, as if the laptop was say 60W, you’d need excess power to feed the hub.
Anker sold 100W cables for a couple of year, I own one from 2 years ago, but they don’t really yet sell > 60W Powerport to power a hub and still have 60W remaining. I know Anker has the 100W Powerport 4 but its huge and expensive.
So logically, as Anker has good engineers within, makes me think a 85W Powerport must be coming to balance their hubs and this new 100W cable.
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