The USB 3.1 gen1 and gen2 thing still really boggles my mind. It's almost as if ...

pitaj · on Oct 29, 2016

They should have just named things this way:

USB 3.1 gen1 => USB 3.1, USB 3.1 gen2 => USB 3.2

I don't know why they would do differently.

Tempest1981 · on Oct 30, 2016

Agreed, 3 levels of versioning is too much for most users. Even 2 levels isn't ideal when dealing with a novice user.

  - Good: Thunderbolt 1, 2, 3
  - Good: USB, USB-2, USB-3
  - OK: DisplayPort 1.2, 1.3
  - OK: HDMI 1.2, 1.3a, 1.4, 2.0
  - Bad: USB Hi-Speed, SuperSpeed, SuperSpeed+
  - Bad: USB-3.1 gen 1, USB-3.1 gen 2, ...
  - Bad: LEV, ULEV, SULEV, PZEV, AT-PZEV

nimish · on Oct 29, 2016

Yeah it's one of the stupidest choices they made. Also, the idea that not all cables must support 100W (20V, 5A) so now the cheap chinese cables are all going to report they can but will catch fire the instant they do.

sfoskett · on Oct 29, 2016

Well they did change the encoding of USB 3.0 to become USB 3.1 gen 1. But that's about it. And it's backward-compatible so it doesn't matter.

Having the higher data rate be "same name gen 2" is beyond dumb.