Why thunderbolt

The access to more and better video and audio experiences are available through one Thunderbolt cord. Quality will not suffer from connecting more devices, either. Some people may know Thunderbolt better through its former name, Light Peak. Thunderbolt and Light Peak before it is a fairly new peripheral connection technology that was made with Intel and Apple working together. This new technology combines audio, data, power, and video through one connection.

Peripherals can also be connected so that high def video using display port protocol is also available. Thunderbolt Connectivity The connectivity of Thunderbolt is very fast and can provide up to 10 Gigabits per second worth of data throughput. Each port on Thunderbolt includes two channels. What makes the speed and connectivity of Thunderbolt even more impressive is that it is bi-direction—it can transmit data, and receive data at the same time.

Thunderbolt is much faster than previous technology such as FireWire and 3Gbps. The biggest advantage of using Thunderbolt is that the performance is much better.

However, convenience is also important since Thunderbolt can support audio, data, power, and video all through one single port. This makes taking your computer on the road much easier, and it can make adding connections to different devices and different media much easier. Moreover, the speed combined with the convenience will make the average Apple user wonder how they were able to survive before the Thunderbolt, at least without pulling out their hair.

The video is also high resolution, and, of course, convenient because you only have to use one port to connect the video and the audio instead of using a separate port for each. It is possible to connect up to six different devices to one Thunderbolt port as long as they are connected off of the first Thunderbolt port, then various cables connected to each other.

The advantage of using Thunderbolt ports over USB ports is the design is not intended to see the quality of the video or audio or speed impacted by having cables connect one to the next. When connected to the Thunderbolt port, then subsequent cables connected to each other, the quality of the connection will not be adversely affected. A Thunderbolt-enabled display often also serves as a USB hub. Clarity is another Thunderbolt advantage.

With competing standards such as HDMI, you must check carefully to make sure your cable is compatible with your port, or you risk losing bandwidth to the limitations of an older-standard cable. The biggest problem with Thunderbolt displays is that most are expensive.

In my personal experience, Thunderbolt connections can also be finicky. Simply adjusting the position of a Thunderbolt-equipped laptop on a desk can sometimes disconnect the signal.

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. The latter has given me a new appreciation for wireless charging.

The current price of Thunderbolt cables tends to be about two to four times that of an HDMI cable of similar length. For instance, this Anker 2.

Note that current, copper-based Thunderbolt 3 cables experience signal degradation. Learn more. Pocket-lint - The ports on the side of your laptop are important. They decide what you can do on your device and how quickly you can do it. In when Apple introduced a new style MacBook Pro , it ditched every single port of its old machines and replaced it with just Thunderbolt 3.

Many PCs makers followed suit. Intel introduced the Thunderbolt platform in at a time when USB 3. Thunderbolt was capable of twice that, 10Gbps, plus it could transfer multiple types of data - not just serial data to storage devices.

It could, for instance, pipe video data to displays. It could also daisy-chain devices together, such as your hard drive to your computer and a display to your hard drive.

USB 4 is now on the way , which will include the Thunderbolt 3 specification within it. In other words, all USB 4. This connector is used for simplicity foremost, but there are other reasons, too. Early versions of Thunderbolt relied on a Mini DisplayPort-style connector, and Apple was the only major manufacturer to embrace Thunderbolt.

Thunderbolt 3 supports the DisplayPort protocol too, so you can use one cable to daisy-chain and drive multiple 4K displays at 60Hz. Thunderbolt 3 allows for connection speeds up to 40Gbps - so double the speed of the previous generation - USB 3.