Ten Gig USB Speeds, Coming Right Up

Do you hate waiting while transferring data between your laptop and other devices such as a smartphone or a tablet? Well here is some good news for you – USB speeds are set to double from 5GB per second to 10GB per second according to an announcement made at CES this month.

And don’t worry about your current USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 devices – the new cables and connectors that allow for this 100% boost in speed will be compatible, so you can enjoy the lightning quick transfer speeds without having to upgrade your devices.

Thunderbolt already operates at 10GB per second, so this puts USB back on an equal footing speed wise with their primary competition. Thunderbolt has only started to gain a foothold very recently in a market that has up to now largely been dominated by USB.

Due to the majority of major tech companies continuing to be USB exclusive, it has taken a while for a legitimate competitor to arise. It will be interesting to see how this new development affects the battle now that Thunderbolt will no longer have the advantage of greater speed.

Microsoft is obviously one of the biggest names in the electronic device market, and they have thrown their lot in with USB for quite some time now. The advantage of sticking with USB versus switching to Thunderbolt is that there are literally billions of devices out there that are USB compatible. Now with faster connection speeds, transfers that weren’t possible because of time and data restraints will now complete twice as fast.

We are looking at some time in the middle of 2013 before this standard is completed – for now it is under review by the industry. Just a little while longer, and USB 3.0 (or SuperSpeed USB as it is being called) will be available.