Belkin Thunderbolt Express Dock for Mac now shipping for $299

The docking station allows users to have instant access to 8 ports by connecting just one high-speed Lightning cable to their Mac. The Belkin Thunderbolt Express Dock includes:

• One Gigabit Ethernet port
• One Firewire 800 port
• One Thunderbolt port for daisy-chaining up to five additional Thunderbolt devices
• One 3.5 millimeter headphone output jack
• One 3.5 millimeter audio input jack
• Three USB 3.0 ports with max data transfer of 2.5Gbps
• Cable management channel

The Belkin Thunderbolt Express Dock is compatible with all recent Macs equipped with Thunderbolt ports, including the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. Belkin boasts that the high speed of Thunderbolt allows users to download a high-definition feature film in 30 seconds, or sync a year's worth of continuous music in 10 minutes.

The Thunderbolt Express Dock was first announced by Belkin at the Consumer Electronics Show in early 2012. At the time, the company said the accessory would become available last September, but that launch date was missed.

Since the original unveiling, the hardware has been upgraded to include three USB 3.0 ports. The originally announced hardware featured USB 2.0 ports running at slower speeds.

But the shipping accessory has also lost an HDMI out port, which was also initially planned to be included with the docking station.