This technology governs USB's increasing utility providing electrical power, whether from a wall socket or a battery. Here's another term you'll likely encounter: USB Power Delivery, or USB PD. But if you want the new 20Gbps speeds, USB-C connections are required. USB-C doesn't guarantee a fast connection - indeed, many of the first phones using USB-C connectors only could transfer data at the old speeds of USB 2.0, err, I mean USB Hi-Speed. USB-C is reversible, so there's no fiddling to get the cable right side up, and it works on laptops, tablets and phones. This refers only to the physical part of USB - the connectors at the ends of cables and the ports on the sides of your devices - not its capacity for data or electrical power. But you're likely to run into a lot of other USB terms.įirst is the newer USB-C technology, sometimes called USB Type-C. The SuperSpeed variations govern only one part of USB: how fast it can transfer data. But as a quick glance at Amazon shows, product packages and descriptions are loaded with references to the technical specification names like USB 3.0 and 3.1. "The internal details of the technical specification aren't intended to be used with consumers, nor do we intend that the specification version numbering (3.0, 3.1, etc.) be used for this purpose," Saunders said.įine. USB-IF wants everyone to use its more human-friendly terms: USB 2.0 is USB Hi-Speed, and the version 3 variations are USB SuperSpeed 5Gbps, USB SuperSpeed 10Gbps and USB SuperSpeed 20Gbps. Why give the old technology a new name? Because it's easier to absorb the earlier technologies into a broader USB 3.2 documentation so engineers have a single reference to check, USB-IF said. The much older USB 2.0, at 480Mbps, hasn't changed names. Now we're getting another speed doubling and name change: USB 3.2 Gen 1 is 5Gbps, USB 3.2 Gen 2 is 10Gbps, and USB Gen 2x2 is 20Gbps. But when the USB-IF doubled that to 10Gbps, it renamed USB 3.0 to USB 3.1 Gen 1 and called the faster version USB 3.1 Gen 2. USB 3.0 arrived with the ability to transfer data at 5 gigabits per second, or 5Gbps. There are plenty of USB logos to choose from to denote things like charging and data-transfer abilities, but they don't always appear on products. This is where the latest confusion comes from. One of the key parts is how fast it can transfer data. What's this about USB 3.0 and 3.1 and 3.2?
#Usb 2 vs usb 3 power update#
Look no further than Microsoft's Windows versions, which include 3.0, 3.1, 95, 98, Me, 2000, XP, 7, 8, 10 and most recently Windows 10 Fall Creators Update version 1809. But naming fluid technology products is never going to be simple. The Wi-Fi Alliance, which markets the wireless network technology, believes technobabble can be a problem, moving to more human-friendly terms like Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6 instead of the specification names of IEEE 802.11ac and 802.11ax. "I expect that over the course of this year, some further improvements that we are looking at will be worked out and start to have an impact."
"We are exploring some improvements to target overall simplification," USB-IF Chairman Brad Saunders said Wednesday. The trade group behind the technology, called the USB Implementers Forum or USB-IF, sensitive to recent criticism, is trying to tidy its labels and logos up some to ease confusion. Read more: The best USB-C PD chargers of 2019 But as USB's abilities grew, the labels to describe those abilities became steadily more complicated.Īnd that's the trouble, because if you can't understand the differences between USB 3.1, USB-C and USB PD, you might buy the wrong cable or be surprised how slow your new external hard drive is. USB started more than two decades ago as a data-transfer technology, but it's expanded to charging phones and now powering laptops. Don't panic, though - we'll spell out the details below. The newest example: What used to be called USB 3.1 is now USB 3.2.
Oh, and by the way, those names can change even when the underlying technology doesn't. That's because the trade group overseeing USB has a bunch of potentially confusing labels. You probably won't lose any sleep over cache invalidation, but names can indeed be a problem if you're buying a PC, phone, external hard drive or some other device with a USB port. If you're trying to decode the feature list of the latest tech product, you can probably appreciate the snarky tech saying, "There are only two hard things in computer science: cache invalidation and naming things."
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