As the owner of a M4 Max and a work Windows laptop with TB5, I can tell you that this feature alone is not going to make a laptop outdated immediately. There is so little that can take advantage of it, except for driving multiple high end monitors, that other things will cause issues...I for one cannot afford multiple copies of the high end monitors that would need the TB5 connection, and no storage devices I have been able to afford events the data bandwidth of TB4. The effective data handling of my M1 Max and M4 Max system are not so different. As others will say, bragging right, expensive cables, and nothing much more.