Skip to main content
Customer Review
Reviewed in the United States on August 14, 2020
I do video editing and use my 2017 Macbook Pro with multiple monitors and external high drives. Like many Mac owners, I have gone through a pile of usb C dongle solutions (and a lot of money) in order to find a perfect solution, and with mixed results. I have been hesitant to spend the money on a true thunderbolt dock given their high price tags, but when I saw this product I decided to take the plunge and try to solve my problem by throwing some money at it.
Most ports on this docking station work very well. It does get quite hot, which is expected since it passes 85W to the laptop, and all of of the usual ports perform as expected. The availability of an micro sd card slot and multiple usb 3.1 ports are big pluses, but the big selling point and the justification for the high price of this product is the thunderbolt pass through capability, which is where I have run into problems.
While the first monitor connected via hdmi works just fine, I cannot establish a reliable connection to a second monitor using the thunderbolt port. I have tested multiple monitors, multiple cables, and multiple devices, including daisy chaining devices (an advertised feature of this product) all with the same result. I CAN establish a connection, but not in a reliable fashion, and as soon as my laptop goes to sleep or is restarted I am greeted with a black screen. The dock works just fine as long as I don't use the thunderbolt port, but that T3 port and pass through ability are the primary selling point of this product.
My current solution is to connect a single monitor to the hdmi port, then connecting my other monitors directly to the laptop's T3 ports. As long as the T3 port on the dock is not in use, it works fine. This dongle nightmare is exactly the problem I bought this product to solve, and why I bit the bullet and accepted that premium price tag.
Needless to say I am extremely disappointed that the thunderbolt capability of this thunderbolt dock is not functional, at least not in a reliable and consistent manner.
Most ports on this docking station work very well. It does get quite hot, which is expected since it passes 85W to the laptop, and all of of the usual ports perform as expected. The availability of an micro sd card slot and multiple usb 3.1 ports are big pluses, but the big selling point and the justification for the high price of this product is the thunderbolt pass through capability, which is where I have run into problems.
While the first monitor connected via hdmi works just fine, I cannot establish a reliable connection to a second monitor using the thunderbolt port. I have tested multiple monitors, multiple cables, and multiple devices, including daisy chaining devices (an advertised feature of this product) all with the same result. I CAN establish a connection, but not in a reliable fashion, and as soon as my laptop goes to sleep or is restarted I am greeted with a black screen. The dock works just fine as long as I don't use the thunderbolt port, but that T3 port and pass through ability are the primary selling point of this product.
My current solution is to connect a single monitor to the hdmi port, then connecting my other monitors directly to the laptop's T3 ports. As long as the T3 port on the dock is not in use, it works fine. This dongle nightmare is exactly the problem I bought this product to solve, and why I bit the bullet and accepted that premium price tag.
Needless to say I am extremely disappointed that the thunderbolt capability of this thunderbolt dock is not functional, at least not in a reliable and consistent manner.
