3-Pack 1-Meter Samsung USB-C to USB-C Cable (Black or White) Expired

There's actually a lot to unpack in that question:

Are these authentic Samsung cables?
Are these 5A-rated Samsung cables?

Here's a couple of considerations I'd add about the Samsung 5A cables:

The Samsung 5A cable is typically paired with the 45W charger and probably isn't ideal for 100W loads despite the marketing/labeling. Rather, the 5A rating is important because of the high-current requirements for 45W Super Fast Charging 2.0 on newer phones.
Otherwise the construction of these cables is good enough [youtube.com] but definitely represent a lot of cost-cutting on Samsung's part. I've made a habit out of setting aside Samsung's stamped-connector cables out of an abundance of caution.

I've generally settled upon some USB-IF 60W cables to fulfill most of my charging needs. I do own a 5A Samsung cable (that was paired with the 45W charger) but I don't make use of it these days (in part because I don't own a phone or other device that would specifically benefit from the 5A rating).

It is entirely likely that these could be grey market cables. So the best case is that some reseller got a bunch of excess Samsung cables off the back of a truck and is now selling them through woot!. In the worst case, there's no telling as to the actual source of the cables (and woot! already obfuscates the reseller [woot.com]) so you're really making about as informed a purchase as buying some cables in a fishbowl at the cash register of your local gas station.

While your first question is critical (I've largely abandoned woot! due to this issue) I think the second item deserves some qualification. A Samsung 5A cable is a decent charge cable for SFC 2.0 45W loads. There's nothing to suggest that Samsung commodity cables have low enough voltage drop to fully justify proper 100W operation (admittedly few cables do).

Thanks for validating one of the possible scenarios I noted above.

Good luck!
Jon

Well I tested what I have laying around to substantiate my point. TLDR: commodity cables included with a device are probably fine for charging that device, but simply don't compare with high-quality aftermarket cables. This should not be a surprise to anyone.

I did my testing using a couple of USB breakout boards, a Samsung Galaxy chromebook as a test load (pulling a steady 5V 0.40A draw from the Samsung power supply I used), and a multimeter to read the voltage drop between the voltage carrying line(s) (VCC) and the ground. I measured the voltage drop relative to the USB standards (for more information see the medium page from Benson Leung titled "What does it mean when a USB-C™ cable is rated at 3A?"). According to the specification, the voltage carrying lines should experience no more than 500mV of drop and the ground lines are limited to no more than 250mV. I map this to a resistance relative to a 60W/3A draw since all but the Samsung I had (which was the cable included with my Samsung 45W PPS charger) are rated for 60W/3A - and none of these cables would meet the standard for 5A. The wire resistance limit for supporting 3A/60W would be 0.1666Ω for the voltage carrying line (Vbus/Vcc) and 0.0833Ω for the ground line.

Do note that my multimeter was only a Fluke 174 so I'm going to carry around in some of these numbers an extra digit of precision that isn't really deserved... but that's also my rationale for giving one of the marginal cables an orange "fail but not really/barely pass" kind of label.

When I tested a 1' Amazon Basics, 3' Insignia, and 8' Insignia - all of which being very thick, rated for 3A, and the Insignia cables both being USB-IF certified - all of them had measured resistance values within the spec. The 8' Insignia was the closest to the edge with a calculated VCC resistance of 0.1675Ω but consider that this was a very long cable and that the extra digit really can't be proven with the precision of the equipment I used.

Then I looked at two cables I received as commodity cables: the 6' Samsung 5A cable that came with a 45W charger and laptop from Samsung and a 4' cable which came with my Google Pixel. Both were out of spec. I also included a thick 10' Amazon Basics cable in my test since it demonstrated that the Samsung cable at 6' performed worse not only than a certified 8' cable, but also worse than a 10' cable (which was admittedly thicker but still exceptionally long).

Now the last number I calculated in the column was the maximum 20V load for these cables which would experience no more than the 500mV voltage drop. For both the 1' and 3' cables the answer was higher than the rated limit of the cable (as they both perform better than the spec). The 8' cable came out to 59.7W (which is so close to the rated 60W let's say it's a mostly pass). However, the commodity Google and Samsung cables were in the low 40W-range. Why is this OK? Well, consider that the devices that will connect to these cables are expected to be phones which at peak would draw no more than 45W (and even that would only occur momentarily). As such, these cables are well-designed for their intended applications. Rather than over-engineer a "free" cable, Google and Samsung built something just good enough to do the job intended.

Extrapolating these results to a 3.3' cable like the one in this deal, it is reasonable to expect were this cable rated for 5A it may well support a 45W load from something like an S22 Ultra while remaining completely within the USB spec (and not seeing any concerning losses to heat). However, it would be wishful thinking to imagine that this cable is something that should be recommending for proper 100W loads.

So back to what would work well at a 5A/100W load...? Well there are just very few devices out there which could. And those which can, don't come cheap [chargerlab.com] and certainly won't come as a pack-in freebie. The primary reason Samsung has to support 5A these days is for 45W Super Fast Charging 2.0 which draws a whopping 4.5A at around 10V [digitaltrends.com]. That's thankfully far from the potential 100W load that a 5A cable could carry. And if someone did attempt to carry such a large load on a cable that's out of spec the voltage drop is something they would indeed experience as power which never makes it to their device... though to your point the power isn't lost so much as converted by the thin USB cables into heat. And I think there are plenty of examples out there of what happens with hot USB cables.

I've attached my data as a picture so consider that such attachments aren't always readily visible in Slickdeals mobile interface.

Good luck!
Jon

Ship in bulk plastic bag. 99% is fake. If it is original Samsung it will be in retail packaging.