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Thunderbolt 5’s versatility
What might seem the successor to W Thunderbolt 4 is really USB4 version 2.0 inside, and brings support for more highres external displays than Thunderbolt 3 (TB3) could ever dream of.
Running in Symmetric mode, each side of a Thunderbolt 5 connection has two transmitters and two receivers, moving up to a total of 80Gbps of data in each direction. That’s ideal for devices like SSDs that need to read and write data, and should deliver up to 6GB/sec.
Switch that connection to Asymmetric mode, or Bandwidth Boost, and your Mac’s Thunderbolt 5 port uses three transmitters and one receiver, to deliver a total of 120Gbps downstream to a dock or hub with three 6K displays connected. At the same time it can still return 40Gbps, better than TB3, from other devices back to the Mac, making it faster and more versatile.