Typically when we get a new version of some kind of technology, one of the key selling points is
it's way faster than your old one! And in fairness to Intel, Thunderbolt 4 is
four times faster than USB 3, except for one small problem. USB 3 is not the previous generation
technology for Thunderbolt, and it turned out that Intel was also referring to the version
of USB 3 that is 10 gigabit per second, not 20 gigabit. So at 40 gigabit per second,
Thunderbolt 4 actually has the exact same transfer speeds as its predecessor Thunderbolt 3. So then
is there any real reason to get excited? Well, maybe. As it turns out, that 40 gigabit speed
was actually a little misleading before. While it was already the maximum overall speed,
some Thunderbolt 3 ports only supported speeds of up to 16 gigabits per second
for PCI Express devices. That limited the top speed of high performance devices like
external storage solutions and graphics cards. Thunderbolt 4, by contrast, increases this to
32 gigabits per second with Intel claiming that users could see external SSD speeds of up to 3
gigabytes a second. That could be helpful if you're a video editor loading tons of footage onto your
external storage device from a camera, or if you're just someone who moves a lot of files around for
fun. And even if you're not constantly shuffling huge amounts of data back and forth, Thunderbolt
4 offers the ability to connect two 4K displays or one 8K display. And with all the multitasking
we're doing these days, driving multiple high resolution external monitors with a single compact
port on an ultralight notebook could be pretty convenient. Now some Thunderbolt 3 systems could
also handle dual 4K displays, but that wasn't the case across the board. So the summary
version is that Thunderbolt 4 has more stringent minimum requirements, making it significantly
easier to understand the capabilities of the device that you're buying. Thunderbolt 4 will
also enable docks with up to four ports, which is double that Thunderbolt 3 supported, and it'll
allow input devices like keyboards or mice that are connected via a Thunderbolt 4 dock or port
to wake up the system. Surprisingly this didn't always happen before, even though it's something
we've taken for granted over USB for quite some time now. There's also a requirement for
lightweight laptops that at least one port to get Thunderbolt 4 certification will enable USB-C
charging, so you'll be able to get power delivery on any ultra portable that supports Thunderbolt 4.
And it's also fully compatible with USB 4, which hasn't made deep inroads into the market just yet,
but probably will over the next year or two. To top it all off, Intel is promising that Thunderbolt
4 has enhanced security to protect against vulnerabilities like ThunderSpy, which made
headlines in mid-2020, and also that the cables should work to up to two meters, so you shouldn't
need active cables at or below that length. That'll hopefully drive costs down a little bit.
As you might expect, Thunderbolt is still an expensive protocol compared to USB though,
and it's not exactly easy to tell which devices support Thunderbolt 4. Now Intel says that all
you have to do is look for the Thunderbolt icon, but it isn't always obvious whether the sticker
indicates Thunderbolt 4 or an older version of the standard, and they use exactly the same Type-C
connector, so you'll want to pay extra close attention to those spec sheets if you're in the
market for a PC with a Thunderbolt port. The first computers to offer Thunderbolt 4 are going to be
laptops featuring Intel's Tiger Lake 11th Gen processors from late 2020, which support the
new protocol natively. Hopefully that change helps to make Thunderbolt a more common and, again,
more inexpensive standard. But in the meantime, you can always just try to earn some money on the side
if 10 gig USB is really too slow for you. I mean, you know, who has an 8K camera anyway?
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