USB has maintained the industry standard for connectivity among devices as alternatives like Thunderbolt strives constantly to take their thrown away. They might have finally found a way to inch their way in, by not only supporting the new USB-C format but actually making it better. In other words, you can enjoy the benefits of Thunderbolt 3 speeds (up to 40Gbps), while using a USB 3.0 or 3.1 cable–which is normally limited to up to 10Gbps).
You can now make use of a number of connections via one Thunderbolt port. This includes USB 3/3.1, DisplayPort,Thunderbolt itself and essentially…many other formats of inputs just as easily.
The new standard will be able to provide enough power for almost any external peripheral, eliminating the need of extra power cables. This will help make such devices even smaller as they don’t have to include support for an external power source, and can focus more on the device itself.
Devices can also be chained together without a loss of speed or power anywhere in the line. Meaning you can connect a keyboard to the computer and then a flash drive into the keyboard, while getting the same performance out of the flash drive as you would if you plugged it into the computer directly. Or you could connect your monitor into your keyboard (odd, but it would work) and then a flash or external drive into the monitor. All of which would till perform the same. Up to six devices chained together,
Hopefully we will start seeing Thunderbolt 3 integrated into motherboards and devices in the near future, as this would prove to be a perfect upgrade to the USB we use today.
