Nearly three years after the the reversible connector made an appearance on a mainstream device, and two and a half years since USB Type-C was first seen on laptops and smartphones, it’s still incredibly hard to find Type-C accessories. For most people, this is not a problem – if you have a smartphone with a Type-C port but no headphone jack, the manufacturer likely bundled a Type-C to 3.5mm adapter and/ or Type-C earphones in the box. If the Type-C port is used only for data transfer and charging, you probably won’t even notice the difference.
But if you have a laptop with a USB Type-C port – and especially a machine with only Type-C port(s) like the Retina MacBook and MacBook Pro (2016 and newer) – then life can be pretty different. First, you have to deal with the transition from Type-A (‘regular’ or ‘big’ USB port – the kind most computer have) to Type-C, and the fact your old hardware can no longer connect directly with your computer. But all this is made worse by the fact that you can’t find a lot of good USB Type-C accessories out there. Thankfully, we are here to help.
ALSO SEEUSB Type-C – What It Is and What It Isn’t
Here’s a list of some USB Type-C accessories that you can buy right now. Note that this is by no means an exhaustive list of everything that’s out there – it’s a compilation of stuff we’ve tested with our MacBook Pro, most of them should also work with your Windows machine and even your smartphone.
1) ROCK Type-C to Lightning cable
Our first pick patches a big hole in Apple’s product lineup – its flagship laptop cannot directly connect to the iPhone using cables that ship with either of the products. There are a few Type-C to Lightning cables out there, but we picked up this one on a whim as it was the cheapest one (Rs. 399 at the time) that looked decent enough. We’ve been using it for a year, and, well it’s a cable so there isn’t a lot to say about it except that it’s managed to survive the wear and tear of daily use.
In fact we liked it so much that we picked up another one recently at a higher price, but remember that the company doesn’t seem to have an official presence in India, which means you’ll likely get no warranty.
Price: Rs. 699 on eBay (probably available at a lesser price elsewhere)
2) Targus USB-C USB 3.0 Hub with Gigabit Ethernet
While Wi-Fi is everywhere, nothing beats the reliability of Ethernet, and that’s where our second pick comes in. This Type-C dongle will add a Gigabit Ethernet port and three USB 3.0 ports to your MacBook.
[“Source-timesofindia”]
