[moonfern]

"USB-IF strongly discourages its members and the industry at-large from using specification names/terminology in consumer-facing branding, packaging, advertisements, and other marketing materials."

They recommend the following naming: XYZ's USB 40Gbps 60W USB Type-C® Cable or USB 40Gbps 60W USB Type-C® Cable

USB 40Gbps... correspond to the USB4 Gen 3×2 mode Hi-Speed USB is USB 2.0 (High-Speed).

A tip usb cable and a number in the logo = not USB2. A usb c cable and black/white in the logo = not USB2

Sometimes the marketing name and a logo specify a certain mode like USB 10Gbps the marketing name is only used for USB 3.2 Gen 2×1 mode, the black/white logo with 10 Gbps always correspond to USB 3.2 Gen 2×1 mode.

If you see USB in blue and 10 Gbps in red than it's either USB 3.2 Gen 2x1 or USB4 Gen 2×1 ( those modes have different encodings )

[fireflash38]

What a clusterfuck of branding. The inability to easily differentiate between capabilities makes everything the same as the lowest common denominator - the shittiest USB-C cable from wish.

[make3]

I wish all smartphones would be able to tell you the capabilities of the wires you're using. You can't expect consumers to order weird devices from China just to know which wire to freaking use with their phones.

[mitthrowaway2]

There should be a colour banding system, like resistors use.

[extraduder_ire]

Something like that was tried with usb 1.1, 2, and 3, being white/black/blue. But many manufacturers got very loosey-goosey with it.

I'm sure it'd be worse as soon as a common spec for this popped up for USB-C.

[NikolaNovak]

Yeah, that was actually quite helpful (when properly implemented). Especially in era of laptops that had a mixture, you knew to plug in the portable drive into blue not the black USB port (and put your phone to charge into yellow one:).

[extraduder_ire]

Yellow (always supplies power) was non standard, as was green. Would have been nice if that was included in an addendum to the USB spec though.