Thunderbolt is the least common external SSD interface, and drives that use it are often geared toward Mac users since macOS laptops were quicker than their Windows rivals to move to Thunderbolt. You'll find it on resolutely speed-focused drives and specialized desktop-style drives that may contain multiple SSDs in a RAID format. Most workaday SSDs don't come close to saturating this interface, so there's no point in paying a premium for a Thunderbolt drive unless you specifically need the port and the speed because of your computer. You can plug a USB-C drive into a Thunderbolt port, so you're not obliged to buy a Thunderbolt drive if you don't need the speed but have the port. Computers equipped with a Thunderbolt 4 port—currently the most common variant—offer a blazing top bandwidth of 40Gbps. These ports are found on Macs and a growing number of mainstream-to-high-end Windows laptops. The physical connector is the same as USB-C, but Thunderbolt SSDs are not backward-compatible with USB Type-C ports that lack Thunderbolt support; look for the little lightning-bolt symbol next to the port. A few very new PCs support the latest Thunderbolt 5 standard, which doubles the theoretical throughput maximum to 80Gbps. Both OWC and Sabrent are launching Thunderbolt 5 external SSDs with top speeds in excess of 6,000MBps. Thunderbolt 5 is backward-compatible with Thunderbolt 3 and 4 as well as USB4.