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Comment by mbreese

2 hours ago

The fact that you had to list all of the versions and speeds at the top of your post is illustrative of what the parent was trying to say. We can all look up what speed is associated with what version, but it’s not exactly a consumer friendly experience.

A few computer manufacturers do the right thing and they mark the speed on the USB ports, removing ambiguities, for example ASUS does this on my NUCs and motherboards.

Unfortunately, there are too many who do not do this, even among the biggest computer vendors.

  • > mark the speed on the USB ports, removing ambiguities

    Unfortunately it's not true.

    Quiz: what happens when a device capable of 20Gbps is plugged into a port marked as 40Gbps?

    • I can't tell if this is a trick question that has something to do with a quirk of USB running multiple lanes in parallel to get higher speeds.

      Because if not then it's the same as any specification for connecting devices that allows for multiple speeds. It runs at the lowest of the max speeds supported of everything in the chain.

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Thats just port speed, charging and other features are all a crapshoot on USB making Thunderbolt the sane version of the "USB-C" family where it requires a set of things (speed, charging wattage)