The first Thunderbolt 5 cables are ready

But they won't be useful for 99 % users for quite some time.

When Intel confirmed that the latest Thunderbolt 5 standard is ready, and that we will be able to take advantage of bandwidth up to 120 Gbps, 240 watts of power and more than enough capacity to simultaneously drive multiple external SSDs, external graphics cards, high-resolution monitors, we could only be speechless. This is a huge improvement, but even if something is confirmed, it does not mean that we can go to the store the next day and buy it.

Well, Cable Matters recently started shipping Thunderbolt 5 cables, and we can go to the store (aka Amazon) today and buy them. But should they really? The price varies between 20 and 40 dollars depending on the length, which is not excessive. The obstacle, however, is not the price, but the devices that can take advantage of the new standard. We can count them on one hand.

After a quick search, the Razer Blade 18 is the only laptop with Thunderbolt 5 support, and even then only in the special Mercury Edition, which costs around €5,000. At CES, we got a glimpse of upcoming devices that will support the new standard, but are not yet available for sale. So even if you have a €5,000 laptop, you don't have any external devices to connect to your computer.

In theory, you could connect two such computers and take advantage of Thunderbolt 5 for fast data transfer, although even in this case there would be limitations (SSD speed...). Hyper has introduced a Thunderbolt 5 dock, but it's out of stock yet.

Those who purchase the first generation of Thunderbolt 5 cables will, for the time being, use them as Thunderbolt 4 cables in most cases. But at least they will be prepared for the future.