Elgato reveals Thunderbolt 3 dock with dual 4K monitor support, legacy connections

AppleInsider · January 4, 2017 2:35PM

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.

spliff monkey · January 4, 2017 3:07PM

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.

thedba · January 4, 2017 3:11PM

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.

jesusfreak · January 4, 2017 3:26PM

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.

thedba · January 4, 2017 3:37PM

spliff monkey said:

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 you want to play around with high end graphics then legacy port docks is not your thing.
If you want to have ultra fast external storage then Thunderbolt is the perfect technology for it. To my knowledge you can daisy chain up to 5 of these devices together.

thedba · January 4, 2017 3:40PM

jesusfreak said:

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.

Maybe because with Thunderbolt you can daisy chain up to five devices. In other words that one port on your dock or MBP can have up to 5 devices passing through it and no loss of speed whatsoever.

schlack · January 4, 2017 3:49PM

spliff monkey said:

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.

Plug in an SSD drive. Throughput with this dock is many times faster than any SSD drive could read/write. Even many times faster than a performance RAID of SSDs could support.

spliff monkey · January 4, 2017 4:09PM

schlack said:

spliff monkey said:

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.

Plug in an SSD drive. Throughput with this dock is many times faster than any SSD drive could read/write. Even many times faster than a performance RAID of SSDs could support.

Sure. You can daisy chain a bunch of stuff, but wouldn't it be smart since we have limited full TB3 ports, to also have as much packed into the cabinet as possible? So why not add SSD's and a pci slot for a video card? Then daisy chain off of that, for less used stuff. But honestly. I lived through the FireWire days, x plugs into y, plugs into z, etc etc and it sucks. One cable, to one box with HD's, Video card and a couple of ports is much more elegant than three or four separate chained devices. I had a similar confit in an old magma chassis back in the day for my PowerBook through the pcmcia port, running a video card, a couple of 2.5" drives in raid and a second card for extra USB ports. It was heaven. Today'usbc spec is much better than pcmcia in any ways, but it seems manufacturers aren't looking ahead. A box like that would be great for what I would assume
would come with future iMacs.

edited January 2017

mike wuerthele · January 4, 2017 4:24PM

jesusfreak said:

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.

Because Thunderbolt isn't a hub protocol. Daisy-chain only.

wozwoz · January 4, 2017 4:53PM

Why such a short cable? 1.6ft ??? That 1/2 a metre???? That's hopeless. The whole point of having the hub is to hide all the crap/cables out of the way, and then run a single cable from the hub carrying POWER + DATA (Ethernet etc) to the computer. You can't do that with 1/2m. You need 2m at least.
I know you can't get a cable extender for USB 3.1 that carries both Power + Data. Is that possible with Thunderbolt 3?

mikeymike · January 4, 2017 4:58PM

jesusfreak said:

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.

I thought TB was chainable.

(never mind; read all the other posts)

edited January 2017

jdb8167 · January 4, 2017 5:01PM

And an ethernet port. Not mentioned. Gigabit I hope.

macxpress · January 4, 2017 5:28PM

spliff monkey said:

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.

Why not include VGA, SCSI, DB9 ports, or PS/2 ports as well? You can't support things forever. You have to move on. Yeah maybe it sucks you have to get new devices but oh well its how technology works. Instead of buying a dock for $300 you can take that money and start upgrading your equipment for the future. Were not going back to FW800 or ESATA...its just not gonna happen.

daekwan · January 4, 2017 5:28PM

thedba said:

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.

Which is why Apple went 110% in on TB3.

Why hook all the devices up to a laptop (which biggest priority is to be portable). When you can hook all of these devices into a dock with alot of different ports or a cheap hub with only the most important ports.. and connect all of your stuff to your laptop with a single cable that will also charge the laptop.

..but..but..but.. my SD card reader is gone lol

spheric · January 4, 2017 5:42PM

Mike Wuerthele said:

jesusfreak said:

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.

Because Thunderbolt isn't a hub protocol. Daisy-chain only.

Also, what are you going to hub it into? Two half-speed TB3 ports?
You only have the bandwidth of a single TB3 port to begin with.

jesusfreak · January 5, 2017 12:34PM

thedba said:

jesusfreak said:

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.

Maybe because with Thunderbolt you can daisy chain up to five devices. In other words that one port on your dock or MBP can have up to 5 devices passing through it and no loss of speed whatsoever.

I don't always want to daisy chain. And some TB devices only have a single port. I'm buying a dock for EXPANSION not simply a pass through.

Elgato reveals Thunderbolt 3 dock with dual 4K monitor support, legacy connections

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