The first Thunderbolt 5 cables are here, but there’s almost nothing to plug in

Available today on Amazon in 1-foot (0.3m), 1.6-foot (0.5m), and 3.3-foot (1m) lengths for $23, $27, and $33, respectively, the new cables obviously don’t do anything on their own—you’d need a computer with a Thunderbolt 5 port and a dock or some kind of accessory to get any real use out of them.

But to date, the only laptop we’ve heard of with a Thunderbolt 5 port is the Razer Blade 18, and even then, it’s not guaranteed. You’ll have to buy the $4,500 Mercury Edition of the laptop to get that port. (You also get an Intel i9 and a mobile RTX 4090 for the same price.)

And unless you own two of these laptops, there’s probably nothing special you can do with a Thunderbolt 5 cable yet, because the peripherals we saw at CES aren’t ready yet: Belkin, J5Create, OWC, and Sabrent don’t list any of these Thunderbolt 5 products on their websites yet, and Hyper still lists its $400 dock as out of stock with a “Sign up to be notified” button.

But if you TO DO If you have two identical $4,500 Razer laptops, could you use Thunderbolt Share to transfer files between them at ridiculous speeds? Inquiring minds want to know. Otherwise, I guess you could use it as a USB4/Thunderbolt 4 cable for now.

According to Cable Matters’ press release, its cable is made by Lintes, the same company that provided the prototype cable we saw at CES.