Thunderbolt 4 is right here, and so is the primary totally powered Thunderbolt 4 docking station. Kensington’s SD5700T features a whopping 11 ports, 90W of energy supply, and switch speeds of as much as 40Gbps. It supplies both one 8K output at 30 Hz or two 4K outputs at 60 Hz.
Make no mistake: This can be a fancy dock. It’s listed for $289.99 on Kensington’s website. However should you’re the form of one that makes use of an elaborate desk setup with a number of displays and peripherals, and you’ve got the cash to spend, this could possibly be a sensible choice.
For those who take a look at the newest Thunderbolt 4 laptop computer releases, you’ll most likely discover that a few of them have… sparse port picks. That’s par for the course as laptops get thinner. The Dell XPS 13, as an illustration, solely has two Thunderbolt 4 ports, one audio jack, and one microSD card reader. (And a kind of ports will generally have to be occupied by the charger.) For those who’ve determined to purchase one of many XPS 13 fashions (which is an efficient selection — they’re nice), and also you need to use an exterior monitor, peripherals like a mouse and keyboard, or an Ethernet connection, you’re going to wish a dock of some type.
That doesn’t imply you want the SD5700T — Thunderbolt 4 ports will nonetheless help a less expensive Thunderbolt 3 dock if you have already got one mendacity round. However I do assume the SD5700T is price shelling out for should you want extra connectivity and worth Thunderbolt 4 performance. It basically packs a full home-office setup into one very moveable field.
The dock can also be appropriate with Thunderbolt 3 MacBooks which can be working macOS Massive Sur. It labored simply tremendous with my 2019 MacBook Professional.
In addition to the aforementioned Thunderbolt 3-enabled MacBook Professional, I’ve been utilizing the SD5700T with a Thunderbolt 4-enabled Acer Swift 5 as properly. I’m somebody who typically must plug in far more mice, cameras, drives, headphones, and different thingamabobs than my laptops enable, so my workspace is usually coated in a multitude of dongles and docks. The SD5700T supplies a heck of much more connectivity than docks of this dimension that I’ve used up to now, and it’s made my life rather a lot simpler.
With a single Thunderbolt cable (which is included), Kensington 5D5700T homeowners have entry to the next:
- 4 Thunderbolt 4 ports (with switch speeds as much as 40Gbps and twin 4K video output)
- 4 USB-A ports (one 5V / 1.5A charging port on the entrance and three Gen 2 @ 10Gbps ports on the again)
- One Gigabit Ethernet port
- One audio combo jack
- One UHS-II SD 4.0 card reader
- 90W energy supply (whatever the variety of linked units)
Clearly, use instances differ, however I actually can’t consider the rest that the overwhelming majority of individuals would want. And bear in mind, these aren’t all you get — plugging the dock into one port frees up the opposite ports in your laptop computer which may in any other case be occupied by a charger, monitor adapters, and different peripherals.
The SD5700T didn’t require any experience by any means to arrange: I plugged the dock into the wall, plugged in all my odds and ends, turned it on, after which linked it to the laptop computer. And that was it — it simply labored.
The whole lot I linked labored simply tremendous. I didn’t expertise any bugs or efficiency points. The one factor I’d wish to see is a technique to disconnect the dock as a complete with a single click on. At present, you need to eject each linked gadget individually earlier than unplugging a laptop computer from the SD5700T, which is usually a ache in case you have a bunch of issues plugged in. There are third-party apps that may make this occur, however some corporations like Corsair present ejection utilities optimized for their very own docks.
Last statement: It’s not a bad-looking dock. It’s bought a pleasant end that’s shiny however unobtrusive — nothing that can stand out in your desk or flip any heads within the workplace. At 0.96 kilos (0.435 kg) and seven.68 x 2.95 x 1.18 inches (195 x 75 x 30 mm), it’s additionally simple to hold round if you might want to transfer your workspace. You possibly can slip it in into a handbag or backpack with out a drawback (although the 180W brick is a bit clunky).
You possibly can preorder the Kensington SD5700T now, and it’ll ship within the second week of January.
Photographs by Monica Chin / The Verge