[illumin8]

This is my wife. She purchased a bunch of USB-A to USB-c cables off Amazon and wonders why her laptop runs out of power while plugged in - it's because the laptop needs 25-30 watts and those cables can only put out 5 watts because they're limited by the USB-A port.

USB-c PD is such a dumpster fire of a standard. Even with supposedly high end cables like Anker you often can't charge a Macbook Pro faster than it can drain it's own battery under load. We can't expect normal people to understand why there are a dozen different cable types that all have the same tip but charge at vastly different rates...

[literalAardvark]

That's true of all things that don't respect standards, not a PD issue. If you buy a wheel and it's not up to spec it'll crack. If you buy a power cable and it has a type-c on one end and a 110/220v plug on the other, that's not going to work well either.

Buy stuff that's up to spec, and it'll be fine.

[Dylan16807]

The charging speed of USB-C cables (C on both ends) is pretty much just the slow ones and the fast ones, and "slow" is 60 watts.

[j16sdiz]

No. PD is optional in standard.

[throwaway2990]

No.

[seba_dos1]

There are no USB cables that are limited to 5W, and standard non-PD USB-A ports can give you up to 15W.

The only case where you may need a different (non-passive, "e-marked") cable is when going above 60W (3A).

[dhosek]

I recently discovered that I can use my iPad and MacBook charging brick to test PD of a usb cable. If it’s low wattage, the charging brick will not provide any power to the iPad. High wattage and it will.

[diffeomorphism]

It is a bit curious that you immediately jump to PD being a dumpster fire instead of the much more immediate "apple is a dumpster fire and incompatible just to be obnoxious".