[robotnikman]

In my experience, its just best to stick with Thunderbolt when you want to make sure you are getting the best speed for external devices that require it (external SSD's, Graphics Cards, Network adapters)

Much easier and reliable than navigating the confusing sea of USB standards

[jasomill]

While I generally agree, there are still corner cases:

As I mentioned above, a Thunderbolt port can end up with less dedicated bandwidth than a 10 Gbps USB port due to PCIe lane configuration.

Thunderbolt 3 only provides 22 Gbps PCIe bandwidth even if only a single device is connected.

Apple's TB2-to-TB3 adapter will connect any TB2 device to any TB3 host, and any TB3 (not USB) device to any TB2 host unless it's bus powered, in which case you need to daisy-chain a second TB3 device with two ports to supply power.

While Thunderbolt 4 and USB 4 PCIe are largely interchangeable, and while Thunderbolt 4 devices are backwards-compatible with Thunderbolt 3 hosts, USB 4 PCIe devices are not required to support Thunderbolt 3 hosts.