In 2024, there are more Thunderbolt monitors than ever. While Apple currently offers two options, its displays at $1,600-$5,000+ won’t be the right fit for everyone. Luckily, there are more affordable, solid choices from LG, BenQ, and Samsung. Below, we’ll cover the best Thunderbolt monitors for Mac as well as what you get with a Thunderbolt monitor vs a USB-C monitor.
Dell is out the gate early with one of its CES announcements this year. Joining its UltraSharp Monitor lineup is the new 40-inch 5K Curved Thunderbolt Hub Monitor. Here are all the details on this big boy.
After teasing its Apple Studio Display competitor in January and releasing the full specs and price details in July, the ViewFinity S9 5K monitor is now available. Here’s what makes it an interesting Apple Studio Display alternative.
Apple is rumored to announce iPhone 15 next month. At this point, multiple sources agree that the new phones will all be equipped with a USB-C port instead of Lightning. It’s no secret that USB-C has a bunch of advantages over Apple’s proprietary connector, but more than that, it seems that iPhone 15 will have Thunderbolt support.
Back at CES 2023 in January, Samsung teased its ViewFinity S9 5K monitor. Now details for the product that will go head-to-head with Apple’s Studio Display have been revealed including full specs, price, and an August release date.
Dell has unveiled a lineup of new monitors today at CES. Headlining the new products is the 32-inch 6K UltraSharp Monitor with powerful 140W charging for laptops, impressive I/O hub, 4K webcam, 99% DCI-P3 colorspace, and more.
Alongside the Studio Display and Mac Studio announcement last month, Apple also started selling a new 1.8-meter Thunderbolt 4 Pro cable. The company also said it would release a 3-meter version of that cable soon, and now it’s officially available to purchase. Apple’s 3-meter Thunderbolt 4 Pro cable will set you back a cool $159…
As I explained in my latest episode of Back to the Mac, the M1 Mac mini is my main desktop computer, but where necessary, I also use a 16-inch MacBook Pro in clamshell mode. In either case, I’ve found the OWC Thunderbolt Hub to be a great addition to my setup.
When using the M1 Mac mini, the hub expands the amount of Thunderbolt connections, which is a huge improvement since M1 Macs sport just two physical ports. For my M1 Max MacBook Pro, it allows me to maintain a connection to all of my Thunderbolt peripherals, including the Pro Display XDR, with just a single cable connection. Watch my hands-on video for the details.
Whether you’re an independent creative professional or an IT admin for a business or organization, fast and secure data is always a top priority. Without compromise, the all-new iodyne Pro Data stands out as the fastest RAID storage for M1 Macs with amazing 5 GB/s speeds, eight Thunderbolt ports, daisy-chain expandability, enterprise-grade encryption, and more.
Future Macs will benefit from Thunderbolt 5 bandwidth of 80Gbps, according to a photo accidentally tweeted by an Intel exec.
This isn’t a complete surprise – Intel’s director of I/O said back in March that the company was expecting to roughly double the 40Gbps speed of Thunderbolt 4 – but this has seemingly now been confirmed …
LG is expanding its line of UltraFine monitors at CES this year with a new UltraFine OLED Pro. This UltraFine display measures in at 31.5-inches and features a 4K resolution, and it marks a notable expansion of OLED display technology from smartphones and TVs to mid-size displays such as monitors.
There was much confusion earlier in the year when Intel first touted Thunderbolt 4 as the successor to Thunderbolt 3, implying that it would be faster. It quickly transpired that this is not the case: the new standard will offer exactly the same 40Gb/s maximum speed as Thunderbolt 3.
But Intel today released the full specs, and the company says that while it isn’t faster, it does have better specs in several ways …
No fewer than seven serious Thunderbolt security flaws have been discovered, affecting machines with both standalone Thunderbolt ports and the Thunderbolt-compatible USB-C ports used on modern Macs.
The flaws allow an attacker to access data even when the machine is locked, and even when the drive is encrypted …
In theory, all USB-C cables should be the same: that’s the whole point of having a standard. In practice, there are different versions of the standard. More worryingly, many cables being sold as USB-C don’t fully conform to that standard – and that can be seriously bad news …
Other World Computing has made a name for themselves among professional Mac users with their line of powerful and fast external hard drives and adapters. This year at CES, OWC is showing several new products, all featuring Thunderbolt 3 connectivity.
In this week’s top stories: iPhone 7 leaks, more on the rumored upcoming MacBook Pros with OLED touch bar, what’s in store for WWDC 2016, and much more.
Apple also launched its Back to School promo for 2016, and designer brand Coach started preparing for a launch of its Apple Watch bands next week. Head below for all of the handy links to these and our other top shared Apple stories this week.
Apple’s decision to equip the 12-inch MacBook with just a single port was a controversial one, but the USB-C port Apple chose just got a whole lot more powerful. Intel announced back in June that it was integrating USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 to create “one compact port that does it all” – and that port just hit the market in the form of the revamped Dell XPS range.
That means that a single port combines superspeed USB, Thunderbolt, DisplayPort, PCI Express and power. The DisplayPort channel can simultaneously handle two 4K monitors.
Dell has opted to include two of the new ports, and this is an approach I think we can expect Apple to take with the new MacBook Air models (whatever they are actually called) and, in time, the MacBook Pro … Expand Expanding Close
The USB-C port first introduced by Apple in the new 12-inch MacBook looks likely to be used across the MacBook range as Intel has adopted the standard for Thunderbolt 3.
Thunderbolt was developed to simultaneously support the fastest data and most video bandwidth available on a single cable, while also supplying power. Then recently the USB group introduced the USB-C connector, which is small, reversible, fast, supplies power, and allows other I/O in addition to USB to run on it, maximizing its potential. So in the biggest advancement since its inception, Thunderbolt 3 brings Thunderbolt to USB-C at 40Gbps, fulfilling its promise, creating one compact port that does it all.
Apple was an early adopter of the Thunderbolt standard, which allowed a single port to be used for both high-speed data transfer and DisplayPort monitor connections. Intel’s integration of the two standards would allow Apple to replace the Thunderbolt port in the MacBook Pro range while still maintaining full compatibility with existing peripherals … Expand Expanding Close
USB-C is the sole port on Apple’s new 12-inch MacBook, and CalDigit today announced a version of its durable external drive that takes advantage of the new reversible USB 3.1 port. CalDigit Tuff features a USB-C port and cable for connecting the portable drive to the Apple’s ultra-thin notebook, and an included adapter cable ensures compatibility with the USB port that you’re used to seeing on your hardware as well. Since the new MacBook’s thin and light profile intends for it to venture out of your office and into the wild, CalDigit Tuff is ruggedized to endure drops, splashes, dust and other extreme environments.
CalDigit Tuff starts at $139.99 for 1TB HDD with availability starting in July (new MacBook orders currently deliver in 4-6 weeks). A solid state drive version with up to 1TB of storage will also be available while a higher capacity 2TB HDD option will be offered. Expand Expanding Close
LaCie announced its new 4TB Thunderbolt/USB 3 Rugged RAID portable hard drive ($420 list, $399 Amazon) today, and I’ve had some time to take it for a little ‘spin.’ There are two speedy 7200RPM 2TB portable hard drives RAID-ed together inside to give the device very impressive, almost SSD-like speeds but with the cost savings and huge storage of portable hard drives. At the same time, the package isn’t much bigger than a regular portable hard drive and better yet, it can take a serious beating…
As I noted in Part 1 of How-To: Decode Apple’s Tech Specs pages before buying a new Mac, Apple has designed the Mac purchasing process to be easy: pick a model, pick the good, better, or best configuration, hand over your cash, and enjoy your computer. Since most people get confused by tech specs — bullet points filled with numbers and acronyms — Apple downplays them in its marketing materials, leaving customers to sort through the details and figure out what most of them mean.
But these specs are really important when you’re shopping for the right Mac for your current and future needs. So I’ve created this How-To guide to walk you through each of Apple’s Tech Specs pages using clear explanations, hopefully enabling you to properly understand what you’re about to buy. Part 1 focused on the “big 5″ Mac specs you really need to know about, and this Part 2 looks at the rest — generally things that remain the same in a given model, regardless of the configuration you choose…
