I’ve had one thing of a difficult relationship with dongles. Specifically, the common-or-garden USB-A dongle—the little factor you plug into your desktop or laptop computer pc to make wi-fi peripherals like keyboards, mice, and headsets, work. These little issues have brought about me no finish of sleepless nights, emotional anguish, and private turmoil. 

They appear and feel extraordinarily janky once they’re plugged right into a laptop computer, doubly so when it’s important to plug a USB-A dongle right into a USB-C dongle as a result of so many laptops now have solely USB-C ports. They’re terrible, I hate them, and I want in poor health upon them. Thankfully, we’re beginning to see increasingly more gadgets transport with USB-C dongles, and these new digital barnacles are like a balm upon the non secular wounds inflicted by the dongles of yore.

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Why Do Dongles Even Exist

First issues first: Why do some gadgets have dongles? Generally, wi-fi equipment like mice, keyboards, headsets, and gamepads will connect with your gadgets over both Bluetooth or the two.4-GHz band. Bluetooth can introduce a palpable latency into communications between your equipment and your pc. That can imply the audio is out of sync with the video, and your mouse and keyboard can really feel unbearably sluggish.

That’s the place the two.4-GHz band is available in. Not solely is it faster, eliminating any sense of lag between your gadgets, but it surely has a for much longer vary than Bluetooth. That means you possibly can plug your headset dongle into your PC and rise up and stroll round with out dropping the sign, except you get fairly far-off. All the best gaming accessories embrace 2.4-GHz dongles today, as a result of if you’re gaming, even the slightest little bit of latency will be disastrous. 

That used to imply your pc or laptop computer could be coated in thick black rectangular dongles protruding of each accessible port. But over the previous 12 months or two, USB-C dongles have turn into the norm, and I’m by no means going again.

More Like USB-Cool

The greatest good thing about a USB-C dongle over Bluetooth is that I need not fumble with pairing and unpairing when switching gadgets. But its leg up over USB-A is that I can simply seize my USB-C dongle from my PC, stick it into my pill or my recreation console, and that’s that. Sure, that is attainable with USB-A dongles, however there’s a catch. Look round at your gadgets, and consider each you employ on a given day. How many have USB-A ports? Your desktop, positive. Your laptop computer, perhaps. But your cellphone? Your pill? Your recreation consoles? Exactly.

Every gadget I personal has a USB-C port. Not simply my laptop computer and desktop however my (Android) phone, my iPad Pro, my Nintendo Switch, my PS5, the whole lot I take advantage of in a given day has USB-C ports now. Heck, even Kindles. That means my keyboard (Logitech G915), mouse (SteelSeries Prime Wireless), and headset (Logitech G735) can work seamlessly with any of them.

With that in thoughts, take a look at the worth of a good gaming headset. You’re taking a look at anyplace from $100 to $400 for a killer one; that’s not a negligible expense. When I take a look at a high-end gaming headset and I see no USB-C transmitter, I simply take into consideration how limiting that’s. An excellent wi-fi gaming headset can be an ideal pair of wireless headphones, however with out USB-C connectivity, they’re severely restricted. They’re not take-everywhere, wear-everywhere headphones, however they’re priced like they’re.

Infinite Joy, or Crushing Darkness

Now let’s take a look at what it’s wish to have a gaming headset that has a USB-C dongle. Here is the place you think about me and a pair of headphones gleefully bounding via a sunlit meadow in sluggish movement, hand in earcup—not a care on the earth, free from wires, free from the oppression of USB-A, we will go anyplace collectively. The headphones include me to work, to the café, to the sofa to play some Elden Ring, and even to mattress if I need rain sounds blasted into my cranium whereas I sleep. She is my fixed companion and I’m hers; we’re inseparable, hovering via the world swaddled in a comfy quilt of infinite sound.

Sounds nice, proper? That’s as a result of it’s. Meanwhile, utilizing a headset with a USB-A dongle is form of like, nicely, have you ever ever seen outdated footage of Harry Houdini being certain in a straight jacket and chains, then locked right into a trunk and thrown into the ocean? It’s form of like that, however as a substitute of being a magic trick the place you swim to the floor unscathed, you simply form of simply keep down there. Locked within the trunk. Chained up. Screaming into a chilly, detached ocean that can inevitably crush the life from you as you sink into its lightless depths. Forgotten. Alone.

It’s fairly straightforward to see which one’s higher. I don’t wish to get chained up and drowned. That’s why I’ll all the time select a USB-C dongle over USB-A. Yes, this comparability is sensible, don’t give it some thought too onerous.

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