Respected USB-C Reviewer Forced To Take Break After Bad Cable Kills Their Chromebook Pixel Notebook

Over the course of the last handful of months, Google software engineer Benson Leung has made it his mission to oust bad USB-C cables. To most of us, a cable might “just be a cable”, but when off-brand cables are being used, a genuine risk can be posed. From the beginning, Leung made it clear that bad USB-C cables could damage our mobile devices, something he’s just managed to prove at the expense of his Chromebook Pixel 2.

To date, Leung has reviewed dozens of USB-C products, and while some have proven to have less-than-ideal internal designs, damage has been avoided. Until SurjTech’s USB-C cable came around, that is. Once the cable was plugged in, damage was rendered immediately, all because of miswired internals. Leung writes in his review:

“On my Pixel, both USB Type-C ports stopped responding immediately. Neither would charge or act as a host when I plugged in a USB device such as an ethernet adapter. Upon rebooting my Pixel, the system came up in recovery mode because it could not verify the Embedded Controller on the system. No amount of software recovery could revive the EC. Upon closer analysis, serious damage has been done to components related to charging and managing the USB Type-C port’s capabilities.”

If it’s not bad enough that this cable killed off an expensive laptop, it also managed to kill two of Leung’s power delivery analyzers. Oy.

In his latest G+ post, Leung says that this incident is causing him to take a bit of a break from reviewing USB-C products – not much of a surprise there.

While it’s unfortunate the Leung’s laptop had to effectively bite the dust, this is exactly the kind of proof we need that bad cables can cause major issues. If you want to know which cables are worth the time of day, you can peruse Leung’s full Amazon review list.