Check out these articles
- Thunderbolt vs. USB 3.0: The Definitive Showdown
- Jan-2013
- USB vs Thunderbolt: Which is better?
- Jul-2014
Both are fast, but T-Bolt is basically 2x faster (or better). This is the clear winner for super-fast Drives and amazing Video Connections, and beats simple Full HD HDMI by a decent margin (though HDMI v2.0 sports a 18 Gbit/s throughput).
USB is more common... and plenty fast in most cases... especially where high portability is needed (as in visiting another site with your data in your pocket).
Thunderbolt
- Bitrate - Thunderbolt v1
- 10 Gbit/s per channel (20 Gbit/s in total)
- Connector... 20-Pin
- Mini DisplayPort, USB Type-C (Thunderbolt v3)
- Dual-protocol I/O
- Designed by: Intel ... 2011
- Made Popular on Apple / Mac
- Hot Swap = Yes
- Daisy Chain... up to 6 devices
- Signals = Data, Video, Audio
For more on the Thunderbolt in a compact package... check out the Mac Mini.
USB 3.0
- Connector... 9-Pin
- Various Connector Types... including:
- Standard-A
- Standard-B
- Mini-A
- Mini-B
- Micro-A
- Micro-B
- I/O Bus ... Serial
- Designed by: Intel (and others)
- Introduced in 1996
- Popular on the PC and Mac Platforms
- Hot Swap = Yes
- Daisy Chain... up to 127 devices
- Though you may need some power boosters to go that high.
- Signals = Data, Video, Audio
- Pointers (Mouse / Trackball)
- Drives
- Cameras
- Printers
- Audio
- Network Adapters
- Game Consoles
- etc.
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