Beware The USB-C Splitter Unless You Like To Live Dangerously

She Cannae Take Much More Of This

USB-C is wonderful, not just because you no longer need to rotate the plug at least three times to get it in, it allows you to power your laptop from your monitor, and offers external transfer speeds that far exceed what some of us recall our internal connections offering not so long ago.  However it does come with some risks, of which you should pay attention to, beyond picking up excessively cheap cables to charge your very expensive equipment with.  You likely now have so many devices which charge over USB-C that you are considering grabbing a USB-C splitter to allow you to charge multiple devices simultaneously.

Hackaday explains the risks associated with these splitters in a recent article which you should give a quick glance.  The magic of USB Power Delivery on USB-C allows quick charging as well as the ability to deliver a range of voltages depending on what the device you plug in requests.  This can be problematic if your USB-C charger is not wired separately internally, as the first device to connect will negotiate the amount of voltage provided by USB-PD.  When you plug in a second device for charging into a USB-C splitter which does not have separated circuitry, it will get the same voltage and if that is more juice than it can take you are going to see the magic smoke come out of it.

Be careful when shopping for USB-C splitters, and consider making something cheap to test questionable products like they did in the Hackaday article.