USB4 labelling is still a mess, and retailers know it

Two cables with identical packaging can carry different lane counts, power budgets and display support. The only reliable signal is the price.

Retail staff we spoke to described a familiar workaround: recommend the most expensive cable and let the customer overpay rather than return it.

A standards body can fix this with a mandatory label. It has not, because the current ambiguity sells higher-margin stock.