02/01/2026
What does each colored USB do?
White: Starting off with the first-generation devices, USB 1, the white ports are the most common, the cheapest, and the slowest. With potential transfer speeds capped at around 12Mbps, they’ll be the reason your phone charges slowly, for example.
Black: As the second most common UBS color you’ll find, this generation 2.0 port is compatible with devices of all types, supporting speeds of up to 480Mbps.
Yellow: Perfect for devices that dwell in standby, for example, the yellow color USB ports are ‘always on’, supplying power even when the appliance is turned off.
Orange: Similar colors on USB ports have similar uses. Like yellow, orange is ‘always on’ but only supports third-gen USBs, whereas yellow can do both second and third gen.
Blue: The blue version is made to support USB 3.0 SuperSpeed technology and above. Capable of data transfers up to 5Gbps – that’s 400 times faster than white – and best used on laptops and PCs.
Teal: Similar again, teal is just bumped up for USB 3.1, supporting faster transfer speeds of up to 10Gbps.
Red: Finally, rounding off the colors on USB ports is red. This is the most recent one to launch and offers the best performance.
