USB: The Last Guide You’ll Ever Need

USB. It's the one cable that we all use every day and somehow still don't understand. Why have there been eight revisions, at least five main shapes, plus four or five rare ones, a whole rainbow of colors, and dozens of different standards that are all still available today. Ever since Apple committed hard to it in 1998, USB has been the go-to standard for connecting peripherals. But obviously, needs of technology have changed a lot over that time. — Up on the 30-year anniversary of USB. So, if you can believe this, the original spec on USB 1. 0, the data rate was 1 and a half megabits and there was little or no power. There was power, but it was very minuscule power. And 30 years later, right, we're doing up to 120 gigabit per second data rates and we're delivering power up to 240 watts of power over USB type-C cable and connector. That was Jeff Ravencraft, the president of the USB implementers forum. One of the people responsible for why USB, its naming conventions, shapes, and supported capabilities are so confusing, and who's leading the charge to make it better. A general in the decadesl long battle between capability and size. It all started with USBA, whose shape has remained consistent throughout most of USB's history. But in the early 2000s, it was the other end of the cable that was reaching its limitations as smaller devices like MP3 players, remember those? And early flip phones flooded the market. Mini and micro USB solved this problem by being a much smaller, but were still limited by that slow USB 2. 0 speed spec. And by this point in the late 2000s, the world needed more power, baby. So companies were scrambling to fit as many pins in their ports as possible, leading to a wide array of insane configurations that couldn't be clearly defined by shape. So what do humans do when they get confused? Color coding. Just like the wizards in Lord of the Rings, color indicates capability. The original ports were white and black to signify USB 1. 0 and 2. 0, respectively. But if that square port on your computer is blue, that tells you it supports 5 Gbits per second. the standard people used to refer to as USB 3. 0. If it's teal or red, it often signifies a port is running at a faster speed than the rest of the devices IO or has other features like BIOS updates or even standby power. You can start to see why color didn't catch on or at least have staying power. Most brands these days have co-opted color coding to make their products more aesthetically pleasing. Razer, meaning USB colors are about as easy to understand as Sylmerelion lore. But if we can't rely on numbers and the shapes are not really indicative of speed, then what about generations? Thankfully, we have the USB who are getting to the bottom of it. — We've done the focus group studies behind the two-way mirror with novice consumers, with intermediate consumers from a tech standpoint. From consumers who thought they were technically savvy, none of them had a clue about any of this stuff. So what we've done, we've boiled it down to number one, consumers want to know how fast can it go and how much power can it give me. That's all they want to know. And so our march today are focused on data rate and power. You might be thinking, I'm a genius nerd. What kind of dumb focus group couldn't tell all these names apart? Well, let us know if this makes sense to you. First, there's the original USB 1. We barely see it these days, but it's still compatible with newer generations. Then there's the high-speed USB 2. 0 from way back in 2000. Being far more common than USB 1, you can safely consider this your baseline slowest USB speed at 480 megabit per second. This is fine for a mouse, a keyboard, or a cheap flash drive, but potentially slow for modern data. The naming problem really started with the next generation, which wasn't known to consumers as USB 3. 0, but rather as super speed. It hit a blistering 5 gigabits per second and didn't slow down. Boy howdy was that fast. You could transfer a torrented Blu-ray quality version of the extended Lord of the Rings trilogy in 6 minutes flat. But just because super speed might have been a legit description doesn't mean it was understandable to consumers. And oh boy, the names only get wackier from here. We'll go through them all right after this message from our sponsor. Odo. They make it easy to wrangle up all the aspects of business management into one platform. Whether that's CRM, project management tools, invoicing, running a forum, it can be all o done with ODO. It has a user-friendly and customizable interface, so you can make sure it suits your needs best. And if you only end up needing a single application, ODO is free. You can even book a demo with them before you decide to try it. So use our link for a free 15-day trial with no credit card required. As technology improved in the mid2010s, the USB implementers forum decided to constantly rename the standard each time they introduced a new speed, and they

overshot a little. The original super speed USB 3. 0 was renamed to USB 3. 1 Gen 1 in 2013. And then 6 years later, when it became clear that the world wasn't ending, they updated the spec and renamed it again to USB 3. 2 Gen 1. It's the same speed, just three different internal names over 10 years. It's worth noting that these cables are supposed to be labeled with the logo denoting super speed USB on the connector itself, but like what eventually happened with colors, manufacturers didn't really care enough to follow the rules or they just didn't want to pay the USB for certification. When the technology doubled its speed to 10 Gbits per second, they updated the spec again and the pattern repeated itself. This new faster version was initially called USB 3. 1 Gen 2 under the branding of Hubers Speed Plus. Then with the release of the next standard, it was retroactively renamed to USB 3. 2 Gen 2 while still keeping its logo. Today it's referred to as super speed 10 Gbit per second. Rule of thumb, if you see Gen 2, you know it's a 10 Gbit per second connection. The new 3. 2 title on the box did not mean a new speed. It only meant the entire family of names had been updated. What is going on in that war room, Jeff? — What's in your mind? — You would think that after all this, they would finally get the hint, but like Square Annex with Kingdom Hearts, the names got a little out of hand with the real speed breakthrough, 20 Gbits per second. This speed was a gamecher and a name changer kind of achieved by introducing dual lane technology that runs two 10 GB tunnels simultaneously. The standards body created a completely new technical sounding name USB 3. 2 Gen 2x2. That 2x two is the key, meaning two generation 2 lanes. This is the first time the generation number actually described the new capability. But that's not what the USB actually wanted you to see on the packaging. They tried to make super speed plus USB 20 Gbit per second happen. However, it barely ever shows up these days. It's also worth pointing out that they retroactively renamed the other revisions to have the number of lanes indicated in the title. So, now we have USB 3. 2 Gen 1 by 1, USB 3. 2 Gen 2 by 1, and 2 to denote their respective speeds and lanage. Most importantly though, 20 Gbit per second brings the transfer time on Lord of the Rings down to a minute and a half. That's not even enough time for second breakfast. Luckily, the USB finally realized in 2019 that those names weren't catching on, and all those 3. 2 versions have started to be superseded by USB 4, spelled without a space and without a point. 0 just to be different. This upgrade unlocks truly high-end speeds with a mandatory base speed of 20 Gbits per second, but a top tier version known by the name USB 4 Gbit per second that doubles the speed to well 40 Gbits per second like it says in the name. Holy, they did it. YES. — And if that wasn't fast enough, the absolute latest spec USB 4 version 2. 0 can hit a staggering 80 Gbits per second. Wait, THE VERSION NAMES ARE BACK. OKAY, SO THE name on the spec is still bad, but thankfully the USB if has simplified USB's required label to just state the speed. All you have to do is to look for USB and whatever speed you want on the cable packaging. Finally, some clarity, at least for the labels. And full transparency, our company does sell USB cables, and ours do have the specs right on the plug. To the USB's credit, one thing they've refused to sacrifice as speeds and power continue to climb is backwards compatibility. Thank God. Can you imagine how crazy this world would be? Jeff explained why that's always step one when designing a new USB version. — And by the way, USB 4 version 2 is backward compatible all the way back to USB 1. 0. First off, that makes it very simple and convenient for consumers. Uh now granted it's only going to operate at the capabilities of the older product, right? But it doesn't require a consumer to reby all new stuff, right? And so um that's our bread and butter is backward compatibility. Now all of these speeds relate to data, but an equally important standard has evolved alongside it. USB power delivery, otherwise known as USB PD. A cable's speed is measured in gigabit per second, but its charging capacity is measured in watts. With USB PD, a single cable can now safely deliver up to 240 watts of power to quickly charge a laptop. The ability to

carry both high-speed data and high wattage power is the true innovation of the USBC connector. A huge upgrade enabled by the size of the port, but that topic is big enough for its own upcoming video. So stay subscribed for that. If you're looking to dive deeper into the cable rabbit hole today, you should check out our video on Oculink. It's surprising how straightforward that cable is considering its niche use cases. Also super powerful.