Obviously, we are not talking about the mouse and keyboard that are essential, but about a peripheral that is not widely used today, but that over time will become more important due to the fact that it will be a way in which computer manufacturers laptops will cut manufacturing costs. We are talking about the USB4 hubs. But what will encourage its massive use?
The Fourth generation USB with its 40 Gigabits per second bandwidth twice the speed of USB 3.2 and in the coming months we are going to see a lot of new laptop models that will have one of these high-capacity ports. However, one of the things that is not discussed is that its inclusion will mean for many manufacturers the possibility of cutting I/O ports and not only USB, but also of another type and in a general way. Hence, more than one manufacturer is going to launch laptop models with fewer ports than usual.
USB4 hubs will dominate the market
Many of you have heard the story of the airline that removed an ingredient from the menu and ended up saving millions. Well, we will see that same logic applied to laptops as soon as USB4 is standardized, since a good number of ports will be transferred to a USB4 hub and, therefore, will be removed from the computer itself. All with the idea of reducing the costs of each laptop.
The idea of using USB hubs is not new, we have seen it in the past, especially with ultra-thin laptops. However, the high bandwidth of the fourth generation USB standard allows you to do things like move the video output to a second monitor to it. It also allows us to reduce the number of ports for external storage, in general the reason that will be sold will be to be able to have lighter and finer computers.
The reality, on the other hand, is very different, the objective will be to reduce the complexity of the board to reduce costs and not have to depend on external suppliers. The end user will be offered the ability to purchase a USB4 hub with all the ports needed to perform certain tasks. What’s more, everything indicates that the Type A ports, those of a lifetime, could disappear from laptops over time. However, its support is a must, especially for those who use an external mouse and keyboard.
What ports will we see disappear in laptops?
Well, apart from the video output to the monitor and the USB 3.X ports, as we have mentioned before, we will also see the elimination of the classic Ethernet or network port on all laptops. Especially due to the fact that in a short time we will begin to hear about laptops with the capacity to connect to the Internet at 10 Gbps. We might also see things like MicroSD card readers, etc.
Another thing we shouldn’t rule out of the equation are USB4 hubs with built-in rechargeable batteries. Let’s not forget that the new ports can power certain peripherals with tens of watts and if that has to be removed from the laptop it would be an overload and more if we are talking about several devices at the same time. The fact of having a USB hub that is also a PowerBank, both for peripherals and for the laptop. All this will make USB4 hubs become the most used peripheral, if we rule out keyboard and mouse.
