I tested a $100 Thunderbolt 5 cable against a much cheaper $30 USB4 v2 (80Gbps) cable, because on paper they look almost identical—and for most Mac users, that cheaper cable is honestly enough. Before you spend extra, the real question is: what are you actually using the cable for? For most people it’s docking, external SSDs, and basic display setups, so I ran real-world tests to see if the price difference actually shows up in daily use. For transfer speed, I moved 80GB of 4K footage from a 40Gbps SSD to my Mac (running Thunderbolt 4 speeds since I don’t have an M4 Pro/Max Thunderbolt 5 Mac). Both were fast, but the Silkland USB4 v2 cable finished about 10 seconds faster than the Thunderbolt 5 cable—proof that price doesn’t automatically mean better performance. I also edited video directly off the external drive, and it felt like internal storage: smooth importing, playback, timeline scrubbing, and effects. Gaming off the external SSD was excellent too—FPS, load times, and smoothness were basically identical. I also tested a Thunderbolt 4 dock with dual 4K60 displays, and everything lit up in under 5 seconds with the USB4 v2 cable, plus it charged my Mac (though Macs top out around 100W over Thunderbolt/USB-C). The only time Thunderbolt 5 really makes sense is PCIe tunneling for external PCIe devices—more relevant for Windows PCs than Apple silicon Macs.