CalDigit and OWC Unveil Thunderbolt 4 and USB 4 Cables

Thursday February 18, 2021 8:35 am PST by Hartley Charlton

Popular Mac accessory makers CalDigit and OWC have today announced new all-in-one Thunderbolt 4 and USB 4 cables, promising maximum data and power transfer over a single cable, as well as full compatibility with older USB devices.

caldigit thunderbolt 4

Thunderbolt 4 and USB 4 is the latest connectivity specification present in the newest Macs and high-end external hardware, offering performance up to 40Gb/s, making it ideal for eGPUs, SSDs, external displays, and more.

CalDigit and OWC's new Thunderbolt 4 cables feature maximum power and data transfer capability. The cables deliver power up to 100W, making them appropriate for docking stations or monitors that can supply power, and support external displays with resolutions up to 8K.

Many previous generations of longer Thunderbolt cables lacked compatibility with USB-C devices, resulting in reduced transfer speeds, but both of the new CalDigit and OWC cables are fully compatible with USB-C. This also guarantees full compatibility with both Thunderbolt and USB-C monitors, the best possible performance for USB-C devices, and the ability to connect USB-C devices to Thunderbolt ports, giving users a large amount of versatility from a single cable.

The CalDigit cable is available in a length of 2m and the OWC cable is available in 0.8m only. CalDigit also supports its new cable with a two-year warranty, while OWC's features a three-year warranty.

The OWC 0.8m Thunderbolt 4 and USB-C Cable is available now for $27.99 on MacSales.com, while the CalDigit 2m Thunderbolt 4 and USB-C Cable is available on the CalDigit website for $79.99.

Tags: CalDigit, OWC

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Top Rated Comments

BeatCrazy

74 months ago

I think Cable Matters beat both OWC and CalDigit to market with a 2m certified TB4/USB4 cable?

I bought one from Amazon and can confirm it's certified, and works at full speed with both Thunderbolt and non-TB USB 3.1 devices. Previously, only the Apple Thunderbolt 3 "Pro" 2m cable @ $129 supported full speed USB 3.1 functionality at a 2m length.

I authored the lone review on Amazon for the Cable Matters version: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B084Z65YJQ/

Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)

jlocker

74 months ago

All it just seems like yesterday when I was connecting a SCSI connector to a Mac system with a 1.25 megabytes ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megabytes') per second transfer rate with a DB-25 connector. That was screaming :)

Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)

iAFC

74 months ago

Since when do Americans measure things in meters?

Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)

repoman27

74 months ago

Is there any reason TB3 can't be upgraded for USB 4? They're the same connector, same speed, etc. What is the primary hardware difference?

USB4 is a tunneling protocol based on Thunderbolt, but the two are not the same. USB4 can tunnel the USB protocol in addition to PCI Express and DisplayPort. USB4 also uses slightly different signaling rates and encoding schemes (10 or 20 GT/s vs 10.3125 and 20.625 GT/s). The bottom line is that USB4 devices will only work with Thunderbolt 3 devices if they optionally include support for the USB Type-C Thunderbolt 3 Alternate Mode. Thunderbolt 4 is USB4 with full support for Thunderbolt 3 interoperability.

Any passive full-featured USB Type-C cable up to 0.8 m should support all current protocols. Longer cables require active circuitry to handle the faster signaling rates. The retimer/redriver chips that they use have traditionally only supported specific protocols (e.g. the signaling rates used by Thunderbolt). Thunderbolt 4 cables can handle both USB4 (10 or 20 GT/s) and USB3 (5 or 10 GT/s) as well as the Thunderbolt 3 (10.3125 or 20.625 GT/s) and DisplayPort (1.62, 2.7, 5.4 or 8.1 GT/s) alternate modes.

Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)

BeatCrazy

74 months ago

Is there any reason TB3 can't be upgraded for USB 4? They're the same connector, same speed, etc. What is the primary hardware difference?

There must be some circuitry in each end of the cable to allow for USB4 (as well as 3.1 gen1/2) to travel at lengths >0.8m.

The TB3 standard only allowed for full speed USB at <0.8m, so obviously the new cables have different hardware.

Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)

martinX

74 months ago

Since when do Americans measure things in meters?

The smart ones? 1999. Since NASA lost its $125-million Mars Climate Orbiter because spacecraft engineers failed to convert from English to metric measurements when exchanging vital data before the craft was launched.

Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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CalDigit and OWC Unveil Thunderbolt 4 and USB 4 Cables

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