USB4 is still a pretty new standard these days, and you’ll only find it in a small number of new AMD Ryzen or Qualcomm Snapdragon laptops (Intel models opt for Thunderbolt 4, a similar protocol, instead). While this connector is plenty fast, its successor is even faster and is capable of supplying even more power to the device – and it is now beginning to enter the consumer market.
USB4 2.0 Enters Consumer Market
The USB4 2.0 (that is a terrible name, USB-IF) promises much greater capabilities over current USB4 iterations, including doubling the transmission speeds to 80Gbps, and a significantly higher Power Delivery spec that can provide up to 240 watts through a single cable, which is enough to supply the power demands of most gaming laptops.
The first batch of the new cables is designed by Japanese peripherals manufacturer Elecom, which will soon release two variants of spec-compliant cables in mid-December this year. One of the cables features 60W power delivery, while the other one gets full 240W power delivery capability via 48V/5A mode; both supports up to 80Gbps in throughput, and DisplayPort output up to 8K 60Hz.
Mass adoption of USB4 2.0 standard will most likely take a while, however, as the new motherboards like AMD’s X870E series has only just started adopting the USB4 connector. When they do, you most likely can tell these ports and cables apart from the label – something like “80Gbps 240W”, instead of names like USB4 2.0 that certainly will do no help in clearing the air for most people.
Pokdepinion: I do wonder, will gaming laptops switch to using USB-C exclusively in the future? If that is the case, are they going to be limited to 240W in combined TDP?
