USB 2.0 vs. USB4 2.0

USB 2.0, released in April 2000, added a 480 Mbit/s High Speed mode on top of USB 1.x's rates -- a 40x jump that made USB viable for external hard drives and other high-throughput peripherals for the first time. It remains the fallback data rate on many budget cables and low-power devices today.

USB4 2.0, released September 2022, doubles USB4's ceiling to 80 Gbit/s symmetric -- or an asymmetric 120/40 Gbit/s split favoring one direction for high-bandwidth uses like external displays. It requires new cables explicitly rated for the higher speed; existing USB4 v1 cables aren't guaranteed to reach it.