Why your USB gadgets are running slow and how to fix them ‣ Diverse Daily

It’s good to take a step back and recognize how significant the original version of USB was. Prior to its arrival, computers were often a confusing mess of ports, such as serial and parallel connections, or extremely niche variants like Apple Desktop Bus. While it took a few years for USB to become the norm — heavily propelled by the popularity of the iMac — there was no going back, except perhaps in circumstances where there was literally no choice. For a while, there was no way USB could compete with standards like HDMI or FireWire.

USB has advanced considerably in the past three decades. In some circumstances, there’s literally nothing else you need for a device, whether you’re tackling charging, data transfer, or video output. Yet this is unusual, and there are other ways in which USB might feel “broken” as a format. I’m going to explain why we’re in this rut, and speculate if there’s any light at the end of the tunnel.

A rising tide floats all boats

The sad story of good enough

Pretend, for a moment, that you’re shopping for an EV, or alternately a PEV like an e-bike or an EUC. The main spec for a lot of you is going to be range, since of course that’s a hard limit on how useful a vehicle can be. Watching Netflix or hitting 0 to 60 in 3 seconds might be nice, but it won’t matter much if you barely have enough juice to make it to work and back.

The good news is that there’s a rising tide in the EV industry. Most cars and trucks now have at least 200 miles (about 322 kilometers) of range, and increasingly, the goal is 300 miles (482 kilometers) or better. Things are more scattershot in the PEV world, since there’s a broader scope of use cases — but it’s taken for granted that most bikes and EUCs, for example, will have enough juice for a short commute.

USB performance usually isn’t as vital to phone, tablet, or laptop users as range is to an EV owner, but it’s still an important spec. If you’re doing an emergency top-up before a trip, the gap between 7.5 and 100W might decide whether you run out of juice before you reach the airport. If you’re a professional video editor, slow transfer speeds are going to hamper your workflow, to the point that you might lose hours of productivity over the course of a month.

Spec discrepancies don’t just let down customers in terms of the possibilities. It discourages them from investing in a USB ecosystem, and can even confuse them as to what they need.

Somehow, the tide of USB performance hasn’t risen that much in decades. You’ll still find a lot of devices equipped with USB 3.0, which dates back to 2008, and can’t charge any faster than that 7.5W threshold. You’ll even find many products with USB 2.0, which charges slower still, and caps data transfers at 480Mbps. This is despite the fact that USB 4 has been out since 2019, and blows 3.0 out of the water — never mind tech that was available when Bill Clinton was still in the White House.

I’m not exaggerating the gap. USB 4 supports 40Gbps data at a minimum (versus USB 3.0’s 5Gbps), and between 80 and 120Gbps if you’re lucky enough to have USB 4 v2. It makes small file transfers instantaneous, and it’s practically required if you’re working with terabyte-sized project files. There’s so much bandwidth that a v2 connection can handle external graphics cards via Thunderbolt, if not at their full capacity.

There’s more. The latest version of the USB Power Delivery (PD) spec supports up to 240W, which is enough for some gaming laptops, and amazing for tablets or your MacBook. As I suggested earlier, there are cases where you may need nothing except a USB cable for your wired connections, no matter if you’re trying to plug in a display too — that’s partly due to technologies like DisplayPort Alt Mode.

The fact that there’s such a huge discrepancy in USB specs doesn’t merely let customers down in terms of what their devices can do. It discourages them from investing in the best possible USB ecosystem, and can even confuse them as to what they need in the first place. At some convenience or big-box stores, you’ve no doubt seen cheap “charging cables” sold near checkout that, in practice, may not charge your devices as fast as possible, or even to the base amount they require. A low-power USB 3.x cable might be good enough to slow-charge your phone, for instance — but if you’re trying to run a Steam Deck, you need a cable/adapter combo that can handle at least 40W. I sometimes wonder how many people have picked up one of these cables as a do-it-all accessory, only to discover that power and data capacity isn’t anywhere near standardized. So much for the “universal” part of USB.

The diagnosis and the cure

Is there a way out of this mess?

Ultimately, the cause of everything I’ve described boils down to economies of scale. While a single USB 4 port or cable might not cost much to manufacture, the price versus USB 3.x or 2.0 becomes very conspicuous once you ramp up to millions of units.

Faced with this, device makers too often capitulate to a “good enough” philosophy. Yes, an outdated standard is going to inconvenience some people, especially if they have to buy an adapter — if the percentage of people who complain remains small, however, the profit margins may be worth the publicity hit, at least on paper. This explains why the port on the iPhone 17 is capped at USB 2.0 data speeds. Apple knows that since many people rely exclusively on Wi-Fi or 5G for file transfers, it can force some customers to sync at archaic speeds and not face a flurry of returns.

Will the situation improve? There’s no sign that it will happen suddenly, or even anytime soon, but there is some hope in the industry’s transition to USB-C. Once you’ve made the leap to USB-C, it’s not much of a leap to USB 3.1 or 3.2.

That’s short-sighted, naturally. With better USB tech, customers might not only be happier and more loyal to a brand, but willing to invest in more advanced accessories. In some circumstances, this can lead to whole new product categories. There wouldn’t be USB-C or Thunderbolt monitors if those standards weren’t relatively commonplace on Mac and Windows PCs.

Will the situation improve? There’s no sign that it will happen suddenly, or even anytime soon, but there is some hope in the industry’s transition to USB-C. In 2026, that connector format is so ubiquitous that even some TV makers are finally drifting away from USB-A. And once you’ve made the leap to USB-C, it’s not much of a leap to USB 3.1 or 3.2, which are closely associated. I just wouldn’t hold my breath for USB 4 or higher power levels becoming widespread.