Through this USB Type-C (USB-C) to female Type-A cable, you can plug a legacy USB device you own into your new USB-C equipped laptop, tablet, or phone. There are no active adapters involved here, and the cable is nice and short, so there shouldn't be any signal interference or timing issues associated with active cables. Just a clean, well shielded, straight-through cable that allows you do adapt any USB 2.0 or USB 3.0 peripheral device you already own to that new laptop or tablet.
Please note that this is USB 3.0 cable that supports up to 5 Gbps, SuperSpeed for USB 3.0 devices, with backwards compatible to USB 2.0/1.1 devices. It is a bit confusing, but "USB 3.0 with USB Type-C connector" is also called as "USB 3.1 (Gen 1)". In terms of the features, it's the same as USB 3.0 with transfer speeds up to 5 Gbps, and doesn't have any special charging capability unless noted.
"USB 3.1 (Gen 2)" is the new standard which supports up to 10 Gbps speed and charging, video and audio capability.
Plugable intentionally calls this cable as "USB 3.0" in order to avoid any confusions you may have. This passive adapter cable simply does the Type-A to Type-C conversion so that you can physically plug "A" devices into computers with only a "C" port.
