Thunderbolt 5 vs. Thunderbolt 4: Everything you need to know
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I too get 7680x2160x120Hz via TB4
The issue is more likely to be availability, and marketability.
In general the demand for high refresh rates on desktop displays is driven by gamers, far more so than resolution - it's pointless having a 5K or 6K display if your GPU can only render the game in a playable fashion at 1440P or whatever. This demographic is well known to sacrifice resolution for higher refresh rates. I guess a low detail image that animates smoothly is preferable to a high detail image that is jerky or looks like a slide show.
A large part of the buying market for high resolution displays (particularly above 4K in the 27-36" range) is going to non-gaming users, who are doing regular desktop work where 60Hz is likely to be fine. Most people aren't going to be able to type or draw or do much else productive fast enough to "defeat" 60Hz for practical uses.
I don't think it's a coincidence that Dell, ASUS, Samsung, LG and BenQ all have high-end displays shipping or announced, that explicitly mention support for macOS, and just happen to use a PPI that suits macOS' scaling "@2x" scaling mode perfectly.
Nor do I think it's a coincidence that the 5K@60Hz spec they mostly support is viable on Macs as old as the 2016 MBP15, from 8 years ago. Heck even a 2018 Mac mini with just an iGPU will do 5K@60Hz.
I'm not saying no manufacturers will support higher refresh rates, but realistically I think you're looking at a product that would be a niche within a niche. It's only recently that most of the above manufacturers have (re)entered the ~200PPI display market, it's going to take a while before there's enough potential customers for what you're talking about.
And so it's odd you think they wouldn't bring it to the external displays. Especially when going back to 60Hz is definitely noticeable whilst doing desktop work i.e. lots of web page/document scrolling.
With gaming monitors now doing ludicrous things like 1440p@480fps, I don't think 5k@120fps would even be difficult for manufacturers.
Stuffing everything over a DP 2.0 connection may be difficult, though, but DP 2.1 has been with us for a while now. 5k at 195fps (159fps with HDR enabled) can already be achieved with a standard DP 2.1 port.
When it comes to displays, I think we're currently limited by GPUs rather than Displays. Nvidia's 40 series GPUs only come with DP 1.4, for instance. Until 2.1(b) gains wide support, it doesn't make any sense to build monitors that rely on it to do their job well.
I didn't say it's difficult technically, I said it's about whether they think there is a market for this product.
The recently-available Asus PA27JCV is 27" 5K, but unfortunately not 120Hz:
* https://9to5mac.com/2024/12/26/asus-proart-display-5k-review...
Currently selling for US$ 800 (less expensive than the Apple Studio Display):
* https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1850479-REG/asus_pa27...
I'm considering it for a replacement for my aging 27" 5k iMac (paired with a Mac mini I guess).
LG recently teased a 32" 6K with TB5:
* https://www.macrumors.com/2025/01/07/lg-unveils-ultrafine-6k...
But you should be able to charge and do 5k with USB 4
> 2 Thunderbolt™ 4 with USB Type-C® 40Gbps signaling rate (USB Power Delivery, DisplayPort™ 2.1, HP Sleep and Charge)[..]
"Thunderbolt" is just a name like "USB". AMD didn't have Thunderbolt support because they'd need to license the technology from Intel, but that changed when Thunderbolt 4 was donated to USB.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_(interface)#Royalt...
Also when I connect my Samsung S22 ultra to this usb-c cable, via Samsung Dex I get immediately full screen portable Android desktop, pretty usable for basic stuff as much as Android can be, but controlled with keyboard & mouse.
Sort of fully utilized USB-C cable.
So yes, it's common with AMD laptops too.
Can you do 5 W and 1.1 Mbps and call it usb 4?
USB4 40 Gbps: Referred to as USB4 Gen 3x2
USB4 80 Gbps: Known as USB4 Gen 4
USB4 Version 2.0 120Gbps
I guess if you're required to support 120Gbps on even cheap small electronics then USB 4 support doesn't make sense
And btw the list above includes only the data speed, not the charging capacity.
I'm eager to see benchmarks of eGPUs on Thunderbolt 5
I mean thunderbolt 1 spec was released in 2013. Thunderbolt 5 is the 5th revision in 11 years. Thunderbolt 4 spec was published in 2020, you cannot possibly think about all future needs/usages but couldn't we have anticipated in 2020 that 5k and 8k screen would be a thing and that people would want more bandwidth than 40gbps?
All these standard changes every 2.5 years just create a compatibility mess and confusion for the consumers who don't understand why monitor A doesn't work well with computer B with cable C.
Couldn't we have jumped from thunderbolt 1 to 3 to 5 capabilities directly? Would our life have been more miserable had we had to wait a little bit more from an upgrade from say thunderbolt 3 but if it meant that thunderbolt 4 had been released in late 2021 or 2022 with capabilities of current thunderbolt 5 already? Like trading latency for higher improvements over generation? Does that even make sense or where there limiting factors that prevented thunderbolt 5 capable equipment to be built in 2022 already?
Lots of factors e.g cost, chip availability, heat dissipation, etc. Sure I would prefer upgrading laptop ports from 10Gbps directly to 100Gbps, but not if it costs 10x more and burns up battery.
You can specify anything. But producing hardware that complies with that spec is much harder.
Then you've done a lot of research and development, so you have to sell it in a way that is backwards compatible, so you have to wrangle a whole group of organizations (foundries, chip designers, customers) who each have their own product lifecycles to think about. Intel might be ready, but Apple is delaying their release, etc.
This is primarly external storage. and I paid huge premium for the ThunderBolt 3 external drives to use wy Imac (or Macbook).
A USB C drive I use under windows (that at least does not declare itself as Thunderbolt 3, and using a standard (to what extent that exsists) USB C cable is far faster. (and swapping in the true Thunberbolt cable does not not make it any faster)
- 40Gbps => 80Gbps, up to 120Gbps
- min 100 Watt - 140 Watt max => min 140 Watt - 240 Watt max PD charging
This is great, finally there will be 240W charging hardware. There wasn't any last time I checked.
Apple Lightening: 480 Mbit/s
Thunderbolt 5: 120,000 Mbit/s
They were, as far as I know, the first company to sell 27" monitors over Thunderbolt back in 2011.
So Apple has been all in on Thunderbolt for years, they just persisted with the Lightning connector on iPhones.
Phones mostly don't really make use of Thunderbolt bandwidth like laptops. They make use of the common charging standard of the USB-C connector.
I've never been a fan of the Lightning connector but given they've been making use of Thunderbolt on laptops before most vendors considered it, saying the market has moved on without them is silly.
The market moved to catch up with Apple.
I just think it's a mistake to talk about the very latest Thunderbolt 5's bandwidth vs legacy Lightning as if Apple were still promoting it.
It's like comparing Thunderbolt 5 to Firewire.
Apple are still promoting it
https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/buy-iphone/iphone-14/6.7-inch-...
Apple also argued against EU regulation forcing USB-C adoption by the end of 2024.
> It's like comparing Thunderbolt 5 to Firewire.
I don't think it's fair to make that comparison.
Given that we're only 10 days past the end of 2024, i don't think we would have iPhones with USB-C and 'non-legacy lightening' speeds like we do today.
> saying the market has moved on without them is silly
Given they've produced nearly 2 billion phones with Lightening and are still producing/selling £1000 phones with Lightening, i don't think it's silly to say the market moved on without them.