By now, you’re probably aware of the issues with some USB-C to USB-A cables in the market – using a poorly-made one can leave your laptop, smartphone, or tablet fried into a useless hunk. As such, if you regularly use randomly-borrowed cables when you’re at work or on the road, you might want to pick up one of Satechi’s Type-C Power Meters to protect yourself from those situations.
A USB-C dongle, it plugs into your smartphone or laptop’s USB-C slot, where it serves as an adapter that sits between your cable and the device. No, it won’t actually serve as a surge protector. Instead, it will provide a real-time display of the power flow in both directions, so you can see whether a cable is pushing a little too much power to a device, giving you the chance to immediately yank it off to prevent damage.
The Satechi Type-C Power Meter is a small dongle that’s similar in size to most common thumb drives, with a small display on top showing the measurements in voltage, current, and milliampere hour (mAh), so as long as you know how much power a device can handle, you can keep your rig safe. The displayed numbers are brightly-lit, too, so you can read them even in low light.
Available now, the Satechi Type-C Power Meter is priced at $29.99.