Key Takeaways
- Thunderbolt 5 enables charging up to 240W, making it easier for gamers with power-hungry laptops to stay charged without specific chargers.
- Thunderbolt 5 offers ultra-fast file sharing between PCs, with up to 64Gbps bandwidth, saving time when transferring large amounts of data.
- Thunderbolt 5 increases external SSD speeds up to 5,400MB/s, allowing users to store and access large files without performance issues.
By now, you might have heard about Thunderbolt 5, which has finally made its debut in 2024. The first laptop to include Thunderbolt 5 support is the Razer Blade 18, but we’re bound to see more later this year, and it’s a big deal for laptop owners.
Thunderbolt 5 promises to double everything the previous version offered, and that means unlocking new possibilities for laptops. Whether it’s powering a multi-monitor setup or gaming on a thin-and-light laptop, there’s a lot you’re going to be able to do with Thunderbolt 5 that you couldn’t do before. Here are some of the things that make this technology so exciting.
Related
Thunderbolt 5: Everything you need to know
Intel is working on the next generation of Thunderbolt with even faster data rates, although there’s a lot we still don’t know.
Charge your gaming laptop
Up to 240W of power
We’re starting off with power because this isn’t exclusive to Thunderbolt 5, nor is it a requirement for Thunderbolt 5, but it is a brand-new capability that laptop makers can adopt. Thunderbolt 5 requires a minimum 140W of power delivery support, meaning a Thunderbolt 5 dock has to be able to provide at least that much power. But what’s more, Thunderbolt 5 can support up to a massive 240W power delivery, as specified in the latest version of the USB Power Delivery specification.
Many gaming laptops require at least 240W of power (some go up to 330W) to charge, and for years, this meant that gaming laptops needed a proprietary connector for charging. Now, Thunderbolt 5 is making it so you can charge even the most power-hungry laptops at 240W, so even if you’re gaming, you don’t have to worry about finding a specific charger when you’re already using a docking station.
For when Wi-Fi isn’t fast enough
Another big deal with Thunderbolt 5 is that it doubles the bandwidth available to devices connected via this port. This is beneficial for all kinds of peripherals, but it’s also great if you simply want to share files with another computer next to you. If both computers support Thunderbolt 5, you now have up to 64Gbps of bandwidth, so you can share files at lightning-fast speeds that beat even a 10Gbps Ethernet connection.
Sure, pulling out a cable may not be the most convenient solution for sharing files, but when you’re transferring gigabytes of data, that extra speed can save you a lot of time.
Stop worrying about internal storage
Portable SSDs are going to be much faster
Thunderbolt already provides super-high speeds for external SSDs, unlike anything you can get with your run-of-the-mill portable SSDs. We’ve seen speeds as high as 2,700MB/s advertised for many external SSDs, which is already fast enough for almost anyone to run a full-blown operating system off of a portable drive. However, you would notice a performance difference compared to a modern high-end SSD that’s built into the laptop.
But with Thunderbolt 5 doubling the bandwidth, we should be looking at SSD speeds up to a massive 5,400MB/s, even for external drives. That’s still a bit slower than the 7,000MB/s an internal PCIe 4 SSD can offer, but with such big numbers, you almost certainly won’t feel a difference. You could run an entire machine off of an external drive and never have any complaints, but more importantly, you can store as many files as you need and never have to worry about taking too long to access them. You can store all your video and coding projects on a portable SSD and work on them directly without a big performance hit, and that’s a huge deal.
Related
Thunderbolt 5 could be the standard that make external SSDs and GPUs mainstream
Connectivity was a focus of CES, with specifications like Wi-Fi 7 and Thunderbolt 5 being previewed. The latter could change up the PC accessory game.
Take your gaming experience to the next level
Even with a thin and light laptop
One of the things Thunderbolt has always enabled is a better gaming experience through the use of external GPUs, but now, Thunderbolt 5 is taking that further than ever. First off, the doubling in bandwidth means your laptop can communicate with your GPU that much faster. A big problem with current external GPUs is that the performance of the graphics cards is heavily hampered by the Thunderbolt connection, which is slower than the GPUs are designed for. Thunderbolt 5 may not completely solve this issue, but having double the bandwidth will make a huge difference already.
On top of that, the extra bandwidth is also adding support for higher resolutions and frame rates on external monitors. Thunderbolt has historically only targeted 60Hz (though it generally does work with higher refresh rates), but now, Intel is touting support for up to a super-smooth 540Hz refresh rate. Paired with the extra GPU power, you can now use a single Thunderbolt 5 port to power a top-notch gaming experience, even if you have a thinner and lighter laptop.
Use up to three 4K monitors
Or dual 8K monitors
Finally, the extra bandwidth available through Thunderbolt 5 means we get support for more high-resolution displays. As we demonstrated at CES 2024, Thunderbolt 5 will let you connect three 4K monitors to your laptop using a single port. Specifically, you can have three 4K monitors all running at 144Hz, which is an incredible feat. If you have even higher resolution displays, you can even drive up to two 8K monitors using display stream compression.
This is because not only does Thunderbolt double the total bandwidth of Thunderbolt 4, but it can also reconfigure its lanes. So while it can have 80Gbps of bi-directional bandwidth, it can also reconfigure one of the lanes so you get 120Gbps of bandwidth in a single directional for things like external displays. This makes it not only faster than Thunderbolt 4, but even more capable than DisplayPort 2.1, which is the latest version of that standard.
If you’re a multitasking machine, Thunderbolt 5 lets you live out that lifestyle in a way that was never possible before.
You still need a compatible laptop
All of these capabilities make Thunderbolt 5 sound very enticing, but these capabilities don’t come cheap, and Intel knows not everyone needs this kind of power. Thunderbolt 5 isn’t going to be on every laptop right away. For now, only the Razer Blade 18 is available with Thunderbolt 5 support, and you can expect to see it on other ultra-high-end machines in the future. You might see it in workstations like a Dell Precision laptop, for example.
However, you probably won’t see it on more mainstream laptops like a Dell XPS, HP Spectre, or Lenovo Yoga. That will take a bit longer, so if you want all these benefits, you have to be willing to invest in more expensive devices. Regardless, if you benefit from these kinds of capabilities, you’re probably already in the market to spend plenty of money anyway, and it’s great to have this technology available.