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Thunderbolt also comes with licensing, those docks aren't cheap.

IMO, 20% of folks using thunderbolt for the bandwidth actually need it, the other 80% are flexing. If you want to take advantage of those speeds, you also need to drop money on fast drives. It adds up quick.

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No, it doesn't. Intel stopped charging licensing fees a while back:

https://bit-tech.net/news/tech/peripherals/intel-thunderbolt...

If you needed 4K/60Hz you need thunderbolt not USBC until recently. It is hardly flexing, they aren't that much more expensive - and provide significantly more bandwidth.

AFAIK for 4K/60Hz you can just use USB 3.2 with DP 1.4 alternate mode with 2 lanes for DP and 2 lanes for USB.

Yes, in the newer spec, but it does only leave you with 10Gbps for everything else on your dock.

_only_ 10Gbps

I mean... if you're doing some video editing at work using remote storage on a 10G NIC or have an external SSD plugged in, you're easily going to find yourself in a contention scenario that would just be solved by using Thunderbolt.

A modern SSD will easily pump out 5GB/s reads/writes (40Gbps).

I call it flexing specifically because most folks don't need that bandwidth.

Thunderbolt docks are way, way overpriced if there's no licensing fees anymore.

Modern UIs with all the bloated animations are painful to use with the 30Hz limit imposed on by most USB(-C) to HDMI or DisplayPort adapters. The USB-C alt modes except Thunderbolt just lack the raw bandwidth for 4K@60Hz.

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