Thunderbolt 4 is one of the fastest and most capable connection standards you can utilize today, but Intel has announced its successor: Thunderbolt 5, and it’s very impressive. With promises of up to triple the bandwidth in some scenarios, support for ultra high resolutions and refresh rates, and even the potential for a resurgence in external graphics cards, there’s a lot to be excited about with Thunderbolt 5.
Intrigued? Here’s everything we know about Thunderbolt 5.
Thunderbolt 5 was long-rumored but officially announced in September 2023, with plans for the first Thunderbolt 5 devices to launch in 2024. That will likely come in the form of external drives, and crucially, Intel-based laptops. However, Intel hasn’t made it clear on what platform such laptops would be based, whether it’s the upcoming refresh of its 13th generation Raptor Lake CPUs, the potentially delayed Meteor Lake, or something else entirely.
Intel’s announcement claimed that Thunderbolt 5 would double and triple the bandwidth of Thunderbolt 4, depending on the scenario. It will offer 80Gbps of bi-directional bandwidth — For tasks like transferring files from your laptop to an external drive, and vice versa. But it will also offer up to 120Gbps of uni-directional bandwidth when connected to an external display.
This would make Thunderbolt 5 by far the most capable connection for video transmission. HDMI 2.1 is the hot new thing in living room and TV display technology, but its maximum bandwidth is a mere 48 Gbps, and DisplayPort 2.0/2.1 only offers 80Gbps. USB4 has the potential to offer up to 80Gbps of bandwidth, and Intel previously demoed a Thunderbolt 4 connection offering the same, though most Thunderbolt and USB4 connections are more commonly limited to 40Gbps of bandwidth or less.
Thunderbolt 5 should have no trouble handling 8K monitors at high refresh rates, or multiple 8K and 4K monitors in various configurations. It also supports refresh rates up to 540Hz at lower resolutions and even has the potential to support 10K and 16K displays, especially with Display Stream Compression or Chroma Subsampling. That massive bandwidth would also be very useful for external graphics cards, which have hit a limit in recent years with the performance of Thunderbolt 3/4 and USB4. That will benefit external storage, too, with the potential for far faster external SSDs to be used to their full potential.
Thunderbolt 5 is based on PAM-3 modulation technology. That’s a novel method of transmitting bits along the cable.
Traditionally, NRZ (non-return-to-zero) encoding is used, which allows for a 0 or a 1, or a single bit, to be transmitted. Some connection options also make use of PAM -4 or Pulse Amplitude Modulation 4, which allows two bits to be transferred. The 4 is a demarcation of how many different variants of two bits could be seen (00, 01, 10, or 11). Thunderbolt 5 will make use of a 3-bit data signal, allowing it to reach a higher bandwidth than that achieved by the standard NRZ and PAM-4 implementations seen in current connectivity technologies.
The intriguing real-world effect of this is that it does mean using shorter cables. Passive Thunderbolt 5 cables will be limited to just one meter in length.
Like previous generations of Thunderbolt technology, Thunderbolt 5 will leverage other protocols to achieve its excellent performance. That includes USB4 V2, DisplayPort 2.1, and PCI-Express 4, with backward compatibility with previous versions, too. That allows Thunderbolt 5 to work with a range of external displays and devices with native cabling, or with adapters.
Intel will continue to use the popular and increasingly universal USB-C connector for Thunderbolt 5. This gives it backward compatibility with all existing Thunderbolt 4 and 3 cables and devices, as well as all USB-C and USB4 connections and cables. However, to get the full performance and features of Thunderbolt 5, you will need to have all devices and cables in a chain be Thunderbolt 5 certified.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.