This 6.5-foot Thunderbolt 5 cable is the first and fastest of its kind

Just weeks after delighting us with the first white Thunderbolt 5 cable, CalDigit has surprised us again with the world’s longest certified Thunderbolt 5 cable. The CalDigit Active Thunderbolt 5 (USB‑C) Pro Cable is now available at a length of 2-meter (6.56 feet) for $140, twice as long as the previous longest Thunderbolt 5 cable.

Thunderbolt 5 has a bi-directional bandwidth of 80Gbps that can reach up to 120Gbps with Bandwidth Boost when flowing in a single direction. It is especially capable when used for Thunderbolt or USB-C displays up to 8K resolution, and boasts 64Gbps PCIe performance for connected storage devices. It can handle up to 240W power delivery (PD) for charging laptops and other accessories, versus 100W for Thunderbolt 4.

Other Thunderbolt 5 cables have the same specs but none at anything like this length.

Apple sells a 3m (10ft) Active Thunderbolt 4 cable for $159, but the only Thunderbolt 5 cable it makes is just 1 meter (about 3 feet). There’s a reason for that: Any of the advertised “Thunderbolt 5 cables” we’ve seen over 1m top off at 80 Gbps rather than the max 120Gbps, as they need help to push the signal over long distances without losing some of its bandwidth.

So-called “active” Thunderbolt cables have chipsets that boost and preserve the data signal to ensure full performance and power delivery over longer distances. Longer Thunderbolt cables have to be “active” because a “passive” cable’s signal degrades over longer distances. A passive cable can’t reliably carry a signal over 1m and would result in unstable performance.

Thunderbolt 5 is backwards compatible with Thunderbolt 4, Thunderbolt 3, USB4, and all the way back to USB-C. The braided 2m Thunderbolt 5 cable is available only in the US in the CalDigit store, but will be available in other regions soon. For other Thunderbolt cable options, check out Macworld’s recommended best Thunderbolt cables.

Silkland offers a much cheaper 2m and even 3m 80Gbps USB4 cable that it claims is “for Thunderbolt 5” but it’s not a fully certified Thunderbolt 5 cable that fulfils all the strict Intel criteria.