USB4 is a Glorious Mess

USB has never been easy to understand, and USB4 is no exception. How compatible is it with Thunderbolt 3? What about Thunderbolt 4? What cables can and can’t be used? Is a USB4 cable interchangeable with a Thunderbolt 4 cable?

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FOLLOW US
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MUSIC CREDIT
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Intro: Laszlo - Supernova

Outro: Approaching Nirvana - Sugar High

CHAPTERS
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0:00 USB 4 is soooo confusing
1:25 What is USB 4?
4:47 Connecting TB devices to USB4 ports
7:30 MacOS vs. Windows
9:47 Older TB product compatibility
10:32 Daisy Chaining
12:38 External GPU
13:17 Watch Linus break things
15:39 Is USB4 compatible with TB3/4 devices?

[y]

Once again reminded of the XKCD comic.

Situation: There are 14 competing standards.
"14?! This is ridiculous! We need to develop one universal standard that covers everyone's use cases." "Yeah!"

*Situation: There are 15 competing standards.*

[Vash.Baldeus]

The problem is that a lot of the features of USB4 are OPTIONAL, that's the biggest issue and you never know which of the features is disabled due to that.

[DanyaZChannel]

A small note, Intel developed the Thunderbolt with Apple, so they don’t need to label their port as USB4, it is officially Thunderbolt. Thanks for your content!

[abdoufma]

It'd be really awesome if Labs made a compendium of (at least the most popular) devices and the USB4 features they implement. That would be a godsend for informing purchase decisions.

[AaronShenghao]

Love that you used the monitor Apple intended, you either spend a 1000 on a stand, or hire someone to hold the monitor for you.

[tste_jl]

USB-C is going into a dangerous situation, all the specs on the ports, transfer protocols and cables are all over the place. At this stage I would rather go (a little bit) back to the old days where if I pick up a cable I would definitely know if it would work depending on what the connector looks like.

[Drinkyoghurt]

The people at the USB consortium really went: "Fuck, one person finally figured out how the naming scheme of USB 3 works, we need to come up with something more confusing ASAP!"

[diogoalmeidavisuals]

Remember how USB-C was supposed to make everything simple and straight forward...

[miss_inputs]

Linus being surprised at fancy new tech actually working how it's supposed to work for once is a big mood

[timseguine]

USB never should have added optional components of the standard in any version. The entire point of USB originally, was "a USB port is a USB port". It is also extremely annoying for so many things like alt mode to exist which use USB connectors for things which aren't USB.

Defacto now, it is impossible to know ahead of time if a specific device will work with a specific port without reading spec sheets, and even then it isn't clear (Thunderbolt products will often work with non certified implementations even if it isn't hinted at anywhere in the spec sheet)

[MaddieBwah]

I fail to see how the organization that made 5 usb 3s didn't think to make a USB 4.0M for mobile devices instead of making the biggest features into optionals.

[foogod]

The true irony is that USB was originally developed back when every device had its own connector and even things which could theoretically all be supported by the same computer wouldn't actually work together because the connectors were wrong, etc. USB was _supposed_ to unify all of the different communication standards and connectors together, so that any USB device could work with any USB port. Now, we've reached exactly the opposite state, where even through everything is now using the same connector, you can't know whether any given device will work with any given port because they're all doing different things over the same connector and there's absolutely no standardization of feature sets or functionality.

In a way, the USB-IF have become the evil they sought to destroy...

[teardowndan]

The only thing universal with USB now is confusion about what cables, devices, ports, etc. supports what parts and combinations of the optional specs. Good job!

[BareFinn]

12:26 The ant joke really made me smile. I love how you guys at LTT are so professional and you still feel like normal people.

[huddie]

You can absolutely guarantee that not one device or computer manufacturer will label or even document their ports to state which USB / thunderbolt standard they meet. Nor will selllers on store product listings.

[ThePolaris]

Thanks so much for covering this! It's frustrating how unclear USB4 has been. I would love for you to cover why Ryzen 6000 systems have USB4 by default while Ryzen 7000 systems do not.

[microcolonel]

Maybe the right way to do the logo/branding licensing deal is: in order to display a full size USB4 compatibility symbol on its own, it *must* implement the optional modes; and if it doesn't, it has to list the limitations alongside the compatibility symbol.

[iurigrang]

I would love to see this in a future steam deck 2. It would be pretty cool to have a beefed up CPU, a GPU whose target is the smaller and lower resolution display of the deck, but a way to easily transition to a docking station with an external GPU. That way, the dream of steam deck as your only computer dream that we’ve been talking about isn’t only available for more budget oriented folk, but rather can offer a comparable experience to an actual moderately expensive desktop.

[samsawesomeminecraft]

I really liked someone's comment of standard resistor-style colored stripes on the USB connector that indicate the supported features. Could embed a current rating, data rate, and signal quality with just 3 colored stripes.

[JehuMcSpooran]

Linus: "Watch how easily I can break things."
Everyone: "We watch you do that on a daily basis, Linus."