There are many types of USB ports as the technology has undergone several improvements over the years. You almost need a detailed guide to understand them all. By the way, here’s what each USB port type actually means. Typically, they’re separated by capabilities and speeds, or bandwidth, with USB Type-C ports being the cream of the crop, at least for now. An easy way to tell them apart, besides the port color (colors are also used), is to look at the icon or symbol next to each port or connector. The trident symbol, a three-pin icon, signals classic USB, and the rest are all iterations of it.
The trident or USB symbol is the universally accepted logo for the standard. Starting with a larger circle at the bottom, likely indicating a source port, a rudimentary wiring diagram divides into three channels, each topped with a unique shape: circle, triangle, and square. The shapes represent the true versatility of the technology, as myriad devices rely on USB. The trident alone indicates the USB 2.0 standard – High Speed USB or Hi-Speed USB.
From there, the trident is actually displayed with small changes to help you discern the port’s generation. The trident with an “SS” is a SuperSpeed port, usually USB 3.0 or 3.1. The trident inside a battery icon tells you that the port also supports Sleep-and-Charge or USB Power Delivery (PD). Meanwhile, a trident with numbers tells you that the port is a high-performance USB4 with the data transfer speeds listed, so 40 means transfer speeds of up to 40Gbps. A lightning bolt icon indicates fast charging support.
Why do USB ports have different colors and symbols?
Simply put, each version of USB supports different speeds, with some of the slowest available through Hi-Speed USB or USB 2.0. Despite the “high speed” in the name, which is admittedly a bit confusing, standard USB can be identified by the basic trident symbol. USB 2.0 only offers speeds of up to 480 Mbps. Standard SuperSpeed USB, often a trident logo with an “SS” or a logo with the SS, a trident and a “5”, is much faster, supporting speeds up to 5 Gbps. Small symbol variations reveal a little more, like a trident, an SS and a 5 inside a battery icon, which is SuperSpeed with Power Delivery. Press a “20” and the port is capable of reaching speeds of 20 Gbps. A lightning bolt means fast charging, and a black “D” icon with a white “P” inside means the port supports DisplayPort Alternate Mode for video signals.
If you plan to use a USB port to charge your device or want to transfer data from a PC to an external hard drive, portable media player, or similar device, the port you use is important. As long as the device supports faster speeds, you can use a newer USB port, like SuperSpeed, for faster data transfer rates and faster charging. Plugging into an old USB port would limit these speeds and could make things quite frustrating. The symbols allow you to distinguish the USB versions.
The same goes for ports of different colors. When a USB port is blue, that means it’s a SuperSpeed 3.0 port, for example. This is compared to a plain black USB port, used for standard high-speed USB 2.0.
