Lenovo executive hints at slower adoption of Thunderbolt 5 in laptops

Intel introduced Thunderbolt 5 back in September of 2023, and so far, the hasn't been much of a push from the industry in terms of adopting it. Of course, at CES 2025, the standard got somewhat of proper attention, with brands like Asus and Sparkle revealing the first eGPU solutions that take advantage of it.

These two eGPUs can now match and even beat the options that come with an OCuLink port in terms of transfer bandwidth. To fill you in, Asus's Thunderbolt 5 link on its new 2025 XG Mobile eGPU can offer up to 64 Gbps of bandwidth, higher than the predecessor and USB4, but matching OCuLink.

Sparkle, on the other hand, didn't explicitly share the bandwidth rating for the Thunderbolt 5 port found in its new Studio-G Enclosure eGPU. However, it's believed to offer up to 120 Gbps of bandwidth, which is the maximum rated speed for the standard.

Now, while it's good to see the launch of the new Thunderbolt 5 products, the adoption of the standard in laptops has been relatively slow, and the product manager at Lenovo ThinkBook believes that this won't change anytime soon. In a Weibo post, Lenovo's executive shares that it's "still early" for systems to be equipped with Thunderbolt 5 ports (3.3 feet Cable Matters Thunderbolt 5 cable curr. $32.99 on Amazon).

The 2024 Razer Blade 18 made its debut in April last year as the first laptop that equips a Thunderbolt 5 port. Maingear ML-17 and Schenker KEY 17 Pro are other notable options in the market, and for Mac users, there are the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro with M4 Pro and M4 Max. These are pretty much it at the moment, and per the Lenovo executive, it seems that there won't be many new additions anytime soon.