Remix.run Logo
yndoendo 8 hours ago

The USB-C ports are unbalanced. Should have one on the left and right, not side by side.

Unbalanced USB-C ports has become a common bad design in the laptop industry.

freeone3000 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Commodity hubs, especially USB2, come with lots of ports; it's up to how many connectors you can reasonably fit on the chassis. But running a trace across the board for USB isn't a great sell. Getting a second board on the other side isn't a great sell, especially for budget computers like this one. So we end up with "unbalanced" ports.

yndoendo 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

"Unbalanced" USB-C and USB-A ports on a laptop is a bad design. We should be calling out bad designs. HP, Lenovo, Asus, ACER, Dell, ... all contribute to this bad design. Apple even uses unbalanced USB-C ports on the MacBook Air.

This is why I choose the Framework laptop over the big names. Their design has balanced USB ports were it can be charged from the left or right. Balanced power USB ports improves user experience with using on a couch or in a bed. Plugging in two USB to NIC adapters allows the weight to be balanced while working on a lap or some other non-desk environment.

Balanced USB-C ports sold me and what I first look at when reviewing a laptop.

matthewfcarlson 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yup- if you put usb ports on both sides of the laptop you need a retimer chip as the traces are too long/suffer EMI. Which adds to BOM cost.