Optical Thunderbolt cables promise to remove this limitation. While the spec allows for a cable up to three meters long, the maximum 40Gbps bandwidth is guaranteed only in cables up to two meters long. Note that current, copper-based Thunderbolt 3 cables experience signal degradation. For instance, this Anker 2.3-foot Thunderbolt 3 cable is $32 on Amazon Remove non-product link, compared to Anker’s 6-foot HDMI 2.1 cable for just $20 on Amazon Remove non-product link. The current price of Thunderbolt cables tends to be about two to four times that of an HDMI cable of similar length. (The latter has given me a new appreciation for wireless charging.) Will the same thing happen when you lower, tilt, or pivot a Thunderbolt display? I also have concerns about Thunderbolt connectors wearing down over time, just like USB-C connectors do on phones. Simply adjusting the position of a Thunderbolt-equipped laptop on a desk can sometimes disconnect the signal. In my personal experience, Thunderbolt connections can also be finicky. Thunderbolt cables (which typically don’t include an LED) are easy to insert, but they don’t handle jiggling all that well. We did find a few exceptions, which we’ve listed in our “What to buy” section below. The majority are priced at about $500 and up. LG, for instance, tends to reserve Thunderbolt for its higher-end, premium displays, like the LG34BK95U widescreen 5K display Remove non-product link, which is priced at about $1,200. The biggest problem with Thunderbolt displays is that most are expensive. A Thunderbolt-enabled display often also serves as a USB hub.Ĭons: Expensive and relatively unavailable Pros: A clean, simple investment in the futureĪ big part of Thunderbolt’s appeal is its clean cabling solution, which requires just one cable out from your PC for both power and data. Consult your PC’s owner’s manual to see whether it includes Thunderbolt support. Thunderbolt is becoming increasingly common on PCs-but what isn’t common is a consistent labeling scheme. Your best reason for getting one now is for future-proofing, as we discuss further below. It offers plenty of bandwidth to keep using your old USB key drives, or to connect a display via HDMI or DisplayPort if your dock includes them.Īs mentioned above, Thunderbolt displays have existed mostly for the Mac market up to now, and as a result they still tend to be expensive. Thinner laptops tend to shed legacy ports, so another use for a Thunderbolt port is to connect a Thunderbolt dock. Why Asus just made the first Thunderbolt 4 motherboard for Ryzen CPUs.

Intel unveils the Thunderbolt 4 spec, which AMD believes it can use.

The best Thunderbolt docks you can buy for your laptop PC.

Thunderbolt display for mac pro