Thunderbolt port laptops

Thunderbolt connector

— laptops with at least one Thunderbolt port.

In general, Thunderbolt is versatile interface that combines external peripheral input and video output with DisplayPort signal transmission (see the relevant paragraph). Connectors of this type are widely used in Apple laptops, although they are often found in devices from other manufacturers.

Note that laptops from this category may differ not only in quantity, but also in Thunderbolt versions; at the same time, this interface does not have its own hardware connector, it uses other standard connectors. Here is list of versions that are current today:

— Thunderbolt v1. The earliest version. The maximum data transfer rate is 10 Gbps. It uses connector identical to miniDisplayPort, so you can directly connect monitors to this connector using this interface.

— Thunderbolt v2. Uses the same connector as the previous version; throughput increased to 20 Gbps

— Thunderbolt v3. The first version of Thunderbolt to use the USB-C connector; in fact, in laptops, such connection is often implemented not through strictly specialized Thunderbolt connector, but through USB-C port with Alternate Mode (see the relevant paragraph). Often (though not necessarily) in such connectors there is also support for Power Delivery (see "Multimedia"); in addition, Thunderbolt v3 compatibility may be provided in peripherals originally built for USB4. The speed of this connection can reach 40 Gbps, however, with wire length of more than 0.5 m, this feature can only be fully realized with special active cable (although with conventional passive type wire, the speed will exceed Thunderbolt v2).

— Thunderbolt v4. The latest (for 2020) version of this interface. Like v3, it uses USB-C connector and has theoretical maximum speed of 40 Gbps; however, this release introduced number of important improvements. Among them: the ability to connect two 4K monitors to one connector in daisy chain mode, as well as the ability to work with Thunderbolt splitters in this mode; twice the data transfer rate when using the PCIe interface (32 Gbps versus 16 Gbps in the previous version); guaranteed compatibility with USB4 peripherals; protection against DMA (direct memory access) attacks.