alt Hacker NewsI started buying Belkin TB5 cables which are around $50 a pop. They can easily power a laptop at full load and can stream video at any reasonable resolution/framerate I might need. I've yet to find a need for an NVMe faster than 20 GBps nevermind finding USB4 enclosures, or that the cable supports up to 80. They're also not nearly as chunky as the Dell cables, which are good, but seem to have very rigid shielding.
I keep a few converters for older devices and servers that don't have (m)any C ports, but as far as a consumer "forever cable" goes, TB5 feels close. Certainly the cable's bandwidth is beyond what most people need, unless you're editing 8k video or continually shuffling hundreds of GBs between external disks.
I do something largely similar.
It alleviates the anxiety of knowing what cable does what.
I use Apples Thunderbolt 4 or USB-C cables exclusively: if its white its for charging and low data, if its black its for high data.
I’ve been doing this for a few years, but its really costly as those Apple Thunderbolt cables are crazy expensive.