Mike Peterson
Kingston on Monday announced a new desktop Workflow Station and accompanying SD card readers aimed at simplifying post-production workflows for content creators.
The Workflow Station is a modular dock that connects to a Windows or macOS device via USB-C. On the top of the hub are four docking slots that users can pop individual modules into.
At launch, there will be three different reader modules that users can buy. They include a USB miniHub with a USB-A port and a USB-C port; a SD reader with two SD card slots; and a microSD reader with a pair of microSD card slots.
Essentially, this will allow users to mix and match the available ports on the Workflow Station to match their needs. One might pop in four SD card slot modules for a total of eight SD slots. From there, all eight will be accessible simultaneously with USB 3.2 speeds.
Each module can also be used on its own and connected to a PC or Mac via USB-C without the Workstation Flow.
The Kingston Workflow Station starter kit will come with the dock and the USB miniHub module and retails for $135.20. The SD and microSD card modules are sold separately for $36.40 each.
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5 Comments
This could be very cool - it allows you to customise your own dock.
This does seem like a cool idea in concept. But am I imagining things, or is it significantly pricey?
Cool concept. As to price: yeah, sounds expensive. But after you save a few hours in productivity (and that happens quickly) as a professional, you’re already turning a profit.
And a press photographer being able to suck down a few cameras’ pictures at once quickly may mean the difference between selling a shot or losing out to the competition: one otherwise lost sale, and the thing paid for itself.
It seems like you can't buy any more of the USB mini dock though, so you are limited to 2 ports and a bunch of card readers. This is likely because of limitations of the single upstream USB-C connection?
What if we really made a premium product here? With a single USB-4 (Thunderbolt 4) connector there would be 40 Gb/s to share between all the ports. So could one make a dock with 4 USB-C ports and 4 USB-A ports all sharing that bandwidth (would be ok as some devices don't need much). Or are there other limits to how many ports there could be?
This is unbelievably expensive compared to the multitude of multi-port/card reader combo docks out there that sell for less than one of the modules for this thing. I don't get it.