That's useful for gamers, video editors and photographers who want more graphics power than laptop graphics chips can provide. In addition, USB 4 will be powerful enough to let you plug external graphics cards into your laptop, like you can today with Thunderbolt. 'We now can have multiple displays running simultaneously and multiple data applications at the same time,' said Brad Saunders, chairman of the USB Implementers Forum - USB-IF - that governs the technology.

The Thunderbolt technology that USB 4 will incorporate is adept at juggling both video that's needed to run external monitors or TVs, and data that's exchanged with external drives, flash card readers and other devices. For example, phones may only support slower speeds, which is generally OK since you aren't plugging them into multiple monitors and other devices.

USB 4 should also improve docking stations that use a single port on your laptop to connect to monitors, drives, network cables and other devices.īut not every device will hit that 40Gbps maximum. That's useful for data-heavy tasks like editing video that's stored on an external hard drive or using a couple of 4K monitors. Today's devices usually have USB 3 speeds: 5Gbps, 10Gbps and the newest, 20Gbps. What kind of speed boost will we get out of USB 4? There are lots of details, nuances and even confusion about what exactly USB is and isn't.

'In the end, life will get much easier for everybody.' 'We get the one connector that works with everything, offers high-end performance and works not just on high-end systems,' the premium niche that Thunderbolt never escaped, said Technalysis Research analyst Bob O'Donnell.

It has other improvements, too, because USB is swallowing up technology from Thunderbolt, a competing premium format that Intel decided to share freely. USB 4 offers data transfer at up to 40 gigabits per second, double USB 3.2 speeds.

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