Mike Wuerthele
At the Consumer Electronics Show, accessory manufacturer Elgato has announced its Thunderbolt 3 display, which allows users to connect a pair of 4K displays, in addition to providing some other legacy connectivity options.
The new Thunderbolt 3 Dock provides two Thunderbolt 3 ports, a full-size DisplayPort, and two USB 3.0 type A ports on the back of the dock, and a headphone jack, a microphone jack, and a single USB 3.0 type-A port on the front.
The DisplayPort allows for a display up to 4K resolution at 60 Hz. The Thunderbolt 3 output can drive 5K video at 60Hz. Two displays can connect through the dock by any means, but are limited to 4K at 60Hz. Elgato notes that 4K displays can be supported over the HDMI 2.0 protocol with active adapters.
Power up to 85W can be supplied to either the 13-inch or 15-inch MacBook Pro. With the Elgato Thunderbolt Dock utility, the dock will also charge connected USB devices.
The Elgato Thunderbolt 3 dock will ship at the end of January for $299.95, and include a 1.6-foot Thunderbolt 3 cable.
Other Thunderbolt 3 docking stations on display at the Consumer Electronics Show are the Lenovo Thinkpad dock, Belkin's Thunderbolt 3 Express dock, and the OWC DEC.
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15 Comments
All of these docks and they have t really touched on what I would expect. TB3 dock with a couple legacy ports maybe (ESATA, FW800 and USB3/C) would be great, but most of them fail to include expansion by either adding SSD's and a dedicated GPU. If these things are made for MBP's and eventually iMacs the external GPU would be clutch. As it is you would need to spend +$300-400 for a doc, another $300-$400 for the GPU cabinet. It would be so much better to have expansion AIO and while I might speak for myself, but crappy old ports aren't what I'm interested in. Like VGA on the Asia dock, are you kidding? I feel like these guys are missing the mark.
If this is as good as their Thunderbolt 2 dock sitting at my desk right now, it's a definite buy for new MBP owners who need all that legacy connectivity.
The advantage this one has over the previous generation offering is that with one cable, all data and/or video signals are carried as well as power.
Why don't any of these docks offer more than 2 Thunderbolt ports? It really doesn't buy you much as one has to be used for the input. I'd like to end up with an ADDITIONAL TB3 port when I'm done.