The Test of Endurance: A Journey with USB Connectors

As I embarked on this testing journey, I was determined to push the limits of two popular USB connectors: Micro-B and Type-C. My goal was to insert these connectors 10,000 times each to determine their durability and performance. The journey began with Micro-B, which showed great promise initially, but as the repetitions continued, it started to show signs of wear. By 500 micro-seconds, I noticed that Micro-B had become looser, while Type-C remained tight. Despite this, the test continued, with me persevering until a thousand insertions.

The journey was not without its challenges, however. As the days turned into weeks, and the weeks turned into months, the tedium of the task began to take its toll. I had to remind myself that this was all in the name of science, and that every insertion would bring me closer to understanding the behavior of these connectors. The USB Type-C connector, which was initially more forgiving, started to show signs of wear after 500 micro-seconds as well. However, it took longer for it to become looser than Micro-B.

The turning point came when I hired someone to continue the testing process. James, who had been tasked with inserting the connectors, showed great creativity in his approach. He used a combination of techniques, including the "Yatsi grip," the "double hander," and even a makeshift pulling motion, similar to plucking a carrot out of the ground. This level of dedication and innovation was impressive, if not a bit entertaining.

As the test progressed, we made several observations about the behavior of Micro-B and Type-C. We noted that Micro-B seemed more difficult to insert than Type-C, but once inserted, it performed well. In contrast, Type-C had loosened up over time, making it feel less secure. The man-hours involved in this testing process were significant, with some estimates suggesting that it would be one of the most expensive videos ever made.

Despite the challenges and the seemingly endless nature of the task, James persevered until he reached 8,000 insertions with Micro-B. At this point, the connector failed to recognize the device anymore, but to our surprise, the USB Type-C drive still worked perfectly. We even tried a new cable to see if it was responsible for the failure, and found that it had been mangled, but still worked.

The results of this test are intriguing, but not conclusive. While we did not definitively prove that Micro-B is overrated, our findings do suggest that Type-C may be a more reliable option in the long run. The extra pins on Type-C connectors provide added functionality and durability, making them a worthy replacement for Micro-B.

In conclusion, this testing journey has provided valuable insights into the behavior of USB connectors. While there are still many questions to be answered, our findings do suggest that Type-C may be a better option in the long run. If you're considering investing in a new portable SSD or any other device that uses USB connectors, we recommend exploring options with Type-C.

In addition to this testing journey, I would like to highlight some other products that are worth mentioning. Samsung's portable SSD T3 is one such product that has caught my attention. It's a high-performance drive that offers excellent durability and reliability, making it an ideal choice for anyone looking for a reliable storage solution. You can find more information about the T3 in the link provided in the video description.

Furthermore, I would like to invite you to join our community forum, where we discuss all things related to technology and innovation. It's a great place to connect with other enthusiasts, share knowledge, and stay up-to-date on the latest developments in the field. You can find more information about our community forum by checking out the link provided in the video description.

Finally, I would like to thank Samsung for providing us with one of the drives we used for testing. Their support has been invaluable, and we appreciate their commitment to innovation and customer satisfaction. We also want to thank you, the viewers, for watching this video. If you enjoyed it, be sure to hit that like button, subscribe to our channel, and check out our merchandise store, which features cool shirts and other goodies.

If you're interested in learning more about Ting, a mobile carrier focused on customer service and satisfaction, we invite you to try them out for yourself. With competitive rates, no surprise fees, and 25% off your cancellation fee if you need to leave, Ting is definitely worth considering. You can validate their savings calculator by visiting linus.tech, entering your past bills and usage patterns, and seeing how much they can save you. As a bonus, if you sign up through our link, you'll receive $25 in service credit or towards a new device.

That's it for this article. I hope you enjoyed the journey of testing USB connectors, and we look forward to hearing your thoughts on the matter. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and check out our merchandise store.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enmaybe the problem is that you guys are the type of people who believe everything you read on the internet because whenever I've ranted usually frothing at the mouth about what a terrible connector USB microbe is I have gotten a lot of push back from the community defending it you guys point out words you've read like that it's rated to 10,000 insertions and extractions which is 5,000 more than any of the USB Mini that preceded it and that it was specifically redesigned to wear out the cable rather than the device so your fancy th000 smartphone doesn't turn into a fancy th000 paper weight but me I think that microbe especially the USB 3 variant that showed up briefly on Samsung phones isn't that durable I think this whole thing is a lie propagated by big USB I think in the real world micr B breakes before it's been inserted 10,000 times and I am going to blow this thing wide open browse privately and securely with tunnel bear the simple VPN app try tunnel bear for free at the link in the video description much like the prenatal development of my children this video has been 9 months in the making let's just hope it turns out a little better so in order to conduct my test I asked Samsung to send me their older portable SSD T1 to which they said no s well first they said yeah sure no problem then they said oh sorry we can't do that so I actually had to buy one of these and it wasn't hard to find a brand new one but I did brand new sealed this is basically a similar idea but it uses a USB 3 micro connector then because micro b is actually designed to wear out the cable first rather than the connector on the device I wanted to make sure that In fairness I was sourcing two brand new cables so I've got a brand new micro b cable and a brand new type-c cable the methodology here is I'm going to take these two SSD this one is brand new never used too by the way I'm going to unplug and plug back in let's say you know 50 to 100 times at a time and then I'm going to check them again and see if they work until one of them dies so that's how it all started in August 2016 I set out on the expedition of a lifetime I began with sets of 50 insertions making entries in my journal between each set by the first 100 insertions both connectors had lost their like new stiffness by 250 even ignoring the orientation agnosticism USBC more forgiving positioning and lower mating Force were making the repetitions much faster and by 500 micro b was actually the one that felt closer to its original state with type c being looser but n Nei connector was showing any signs of giving up the ghost and I have to say the tedium of the journey began to take its toll but I persevered until a thousand insertions by this stage USBC noticeably looser feel made it a welcome break from the micro b connector that seemed to be grabbing more stickly than ever before and I began to think that maybe my bad experiences with it had less to do with raw cycle durability and more to do with everyday wear like sitting plugged in for an extended period or getting wiggled back and forth while being moved around so with that in mind and totally not because I just got busy and forgot the devices sat connected but untouched for six long hard throbbing months but then we hired someone who isn't me to pick up the torch and insert like he'd never inserted before James still took another 3 months to get to the big finish but he gets full marks for creativity he used the yatsi grip the double hander and the old pulling a carrot out of the ground technique logging his observations along the way as well so by 2500 insertions micro b actually needed a little Coke to get it in there by 3200 it had actually learned to loosen up and relax for a less friction full experience by 4500 type C's tight fit had noticeably loosened while micro b had reached a state of downright slipperiness by 6,000 insertions we made the observations that b was more difficult to insert than C but seemed to be more engaged during the experience and that the manh hours were beginning to make this one of the most expensive videos we had ever made with no end in sight a 10,000 insertion rating theoretically means at least 10,000 I mean it could go to 50,000 for all we know James begged me to allow him to build a machine to do this for him but I bravely told him no because that would remove the imperfect human element of our test so his journey continued unabated until one day long after all hope for Humanity had drained from his heart James inserted the micro be for the 8,000th time and nothing happened the machine didn't recognize the device anymore so then after 8,000 insertions the USB type-c drive is working perfectly with a connection feel that I would actually go as far as to still trust but the micro b is toast at only 80% of what it was theoretically rated for and we tried a brand new cable to see if per the spec it was actually the cable that died first the cable is mangled but still works leading us to the conclusion then this is a sample size of one so apart from knowing the approximate number of insertions somewhere between 7900 and 8,000 that it lasted before breaking it's really not any more meaningful than someone else's anecdotal evidence that their connector failed we haven't demonstrated conclusively that microbe is overrated but I feel like what we have added some strength to is that on top of its reversibility extra pins for added functionality and yes excellent durability type c is truly a worthy rep placement Ting is the mobile carrier that's focused on customer service and customer satisfaction I know it's crazy but for real you call them and you talk directly to a person and the bills are even cheap you only pay for the data and voice service that you actually use with the average Ting Bill coming in at about $23 a month per device they'll even cover 25% of your cancellation fee if you're stuck in a contract and they have lower mobile data rates than ever at just $10 a gig beyond the first gigabyte every single 10 customer will get to reap the benefits of this new change even existing ones and if all this sounds too good to be true well you can validate it for yourself head over to Linus doing.com and try out their savings calculator enter your last few bills and how much you're paying and it'll tell you if Ting will save you money and if you sign up at our link you'll also get 25 bucks in service credit or to towards a new device so thanks to Samsung for providing at least one of the drives we used for our testing actually the surviving one the other one we had to buy thanks to you guys for watching if you dislike this video you know what to do but if you liked it hit that like button get subscribed maybe check out where to buy the stuff we featured this is Samsung's portable SSD T3 at the link in the video description also down there is our uh merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our community Forum which you should totally joinmaybe the problem is that you guys are the type of people who believe everything you read on the internet because whenever I've ranted usually frothing at the mouth about what a terrible connector USB microbe is I have gotten a lot of push back from the community defending it you guys point out words you've read like that it's rated to 10,000 insertions and extractions which is 5,000 more than any of the USB Mini that preceded it and that it was specifically redesigned to wear out the cable rather than the device so your fancy th000 smartphone doesn't turn into a fancy th000 paper weight but me I think that microbe especially the USB 3 variant that showed up briefly on Samsung phones isn't that durable I think this whole thing is a lie propagated by big USB I think in the real world micr B breakes before it's been inserted 10,000 times and I am going to blow this thing wide open browse privately and securely with tunnel bear the simple VPN app try tunnel bear for free at the link in the video description much like the prenatal development of my children this video has been 9 months in the making let's just hope it turns out a little better so in order to conduct my test I asked Samsung to send me their older portable SSD T1 to which they said no s well first they said yeah sure no problem then they said oh sorry we can't do that so I actually had to buy one of these and it wasn't hard to find a brand new one but I did brand new sealed this is basically a similar idea but it uses a USB 3 micro connector then because micro b is actually designed to wear out the cable first rather than the connector on the device I wanted to make sure that In fairness I was sourcing two brand new cables so I've got a brand new micro b cable and a brand new type-c cable the methodology here is I'm going to take these two SSD this one is brand new never used too by the way I'm going to unplug and plug back in let's say you know 50 to 100 times at a time and then I'm going to check them again and see if they work until one of them dies so that's how it all started in August 2016 I set out on the expedition of a lifetime I began with sets of 50 insertions making entries in my journal between each set by the first 100 insertions both connectors had lost their like new stiffness by 250 even ignoring the orientation agnosticism USBC more forgiving positioning and lower mating Force were making the repetitions much faster and by 500 micro b was actually the one that felt closer to its original state with type c being looser but n Nei connector was showing any signs of giving up the ghost and I have to say the tedium of the journey began to take its toll but I persevered until a thousand insertions by this stage USBC noticeably looser feel made it a welcome break from the micro b connector that seemed to be grabbing more stickly than ever before and I began to think that maybe my bad experiences with it had less to do with raw cycle durability and more to do with everyday wear like sitting plugged in for an extended period or getting wiggled back and forth while being moved around so with that in mind and totally not because I just got busy and forgot the devices sat connected but untouched for six long hard throbbing months but then we hired someone who isn't me to pick up the torch and insert like he'd never inserted before James still took another 3 months to get to the big finish but he gets full marks for creativity he used the yatsi grip the double hander and the old pulling a carrot out of the ground technique logging his observations along the way as well so by 2500 insertions micro b actually needed a little Coke to get it in there by 3200 it had actually learned to loosen up and relax for a less friction full experience by 4500 type C's tight fit had noticeably loosened while micro b had reached a state of downright slipperiness by 6,000 insertions we made the observations that b was more difficult to insert than C but seemed to be more engaged during the experience and that the manh hours were beginning to make this one of the most expensive videos we had ever made with no end in sight a 10,000 insertion rating theoretically means at least 10,000 I mean it could go to 50,000 for all we know James begged me to allow him to build a machine to do this for him but I bravely told him no because that would remove the imperfect human element of our test so his journey continued unabated until one day long after all hope for Humanity had drained from his heart James inserted the micro be for the 8,000th time and nothing happened the machine didn't recognize the device anymore so then after 8,000 insertions the USB type-c drive is working perfectly with a connection feel that I would actually go as far as to still trust but the micro b is toast at only 80% of what it was theoretically rated for and we tried a brand new cable to see if per the spec it was actually the cable that died first the cable is mangled but still works leading us to the conclusion then this is a sample size of one so apart from knowing the approximate number of insertions somewhere between 7900 and 8,000 that it lasted before breaking it's really not any more meaningful than someone else's anecdotal evidence that their connector failed we haven't demonstrated conclusively that microbe is overrated but I feel like what we have added some strength to is that on top of its reversibility extra pins for added functionality and yes excellent durability type c is truly a worthy rep placement Ting is the mobile carrier that's focused on customer service and customer satisfaction I know it's crazy but for real you call them and you talk directly to a person and the bills are even cheap you only pay for the data and voice service that you actually use with the average Ting Bill coming in at about $23 a month per device they'll even cover 25% of your cancellation fee if you're stuck in a contract and they have lower mobile data rates than ever at just $10 a gig beyond the first gigabyte every single 10 customer will get to reap the benefits of this new change even existing ones and if all this sounds too good to be true well you can validate it for yourself head over to Linus doing.com and try out their savings calculator enter your last few bills and how much you're paying and it'll tell you if Ting will save you money and if you sign up at our link you'll also get 25 bucks in service credit or to towards a new device so thanks to Samsung for providing at least one of the drives we used for our testing actually the surviving one the other one we had to buy thanks to you guys for watching if you dislike this video you know what to do but if you liked it hit that like button get subscribed maybe check out where to buy the stuff we featured this is Samsung's portable SSD T3 at the link in the video description also down there is our uh merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our community Forum which you should totally join\n"