Additionally, USB 3.0 ports could bump the available current up to 1.5 A or 7.5 W if implementing the USB Battery Charging Specification.Īnd most importantly, USB 3.0, which was marketed as SuperSpeed, introduced max transfer speeds of up to 5 Gbit/s, a massive 10x increase from USB 2.0’s Hi-Speed USB. With these connectors, USB 3.0 specified 150 mA or 0.6 W current for one unit load devices, and up to 900mA or 4.5 W for max six load devices at 5 V. You’ll need an adapter to use these USB 3.0 connectors with a USB 2.0 port. However, this is not the case for the rest of the connectors, as the other versions don’t physically match. The USB 3.0 Type-A connectors were backward compatible with the USB 2.0 version. USB 3.0 dropped support for the mini connectors and instead supported new versions of Type-A, Type-B, Type-C, Micro-A, Micro-B, and Micro-AB connectors. The revised USB 2.0 standard supported all types of connectors from Type-A to Mini-AB. USB 3.2 Gen 1×1, originally introduced as USB 3.0 in November 2008, had several significant improvements over USB 2.0, its predecessor. USB 3.0 Vs 3.1 Vs 3.2 – Main Differences.The naming of various iterations of USB 3.Xįor ease of reading, we’ve organized the sections below in chronological order with the current generation-based naming convention, i.e., USB 3.2 Gen 1×1, 2×1, and 2×2. If you’re (understandably) confused as well, the table below should be helpful. While the latter is the currently used name, some people still prefer the older names, which adds to the confusion. For instance, USB 3.0 was renamed as USB 3.1 Gen 1, and renamed again as USB 3.2 Gen 1×1. The naming convention on the other hand, was a disaster.īoth the official and marketing names were revised multiple times. Talking about the changes, each generation of USB 3 brought noticeable improvements, which were generally well received by users. USBs have been a real game changer for the world of technology, and they’ve been constantly evolving since the introduction of USB 1.0 in 1996.