Pylons

I agree with Dysamoria and Anime. This one is too expensive for the ports it offers, probably mostly due to the cost of the TB chipset. The only things in this dock that push the aggregated bandwidth towards needing Thunderbolt are the 10 Gbps USB ports. Other than those, you can get everything this dock offers in the various $50-$80 USB-C-based docks already available. If you need 10 Gbps USB then there are cheaper options as well.
I love Anker's battery products but this one doesn't seem to have much of a place in the market.

Also I wish someone would put faster than 1 GbE in these. 2.5 GbE chipsets are below $5. With the recent launch of AMD B550 and Intel Z490 motherboards 2.5 GbE is becoming standard so we can expect cheaper switches soon as well.

Thanks for the article! I've been following the eGPU scene quite a bit but have yet to make a purchase. Currently leaning towards the Razer Core X because it's widely available through regular retail channels also outside the US. An eGPU is a great way to make any Mac a lot more upgradable and future-proof. My worry however is that Apple may not be taking eGPUs seriously enough, for example taking long time to fix stability issues like ones mentioned by ShapeshiftingFish. For more reading I can also recommend taking a look at the Buyer's Guide at eGPU.io, https://egpu.io/best-egpu-buyers-guide They also have a large community (as already mentioned in the article) with lots of helpful users in the forums.

I can see that some people may find docks with design that puts it flush against the laptop attractive, but I personally avoid them for these reasons:
1. It blocks both Thunderbolt ports, while not providing any Thunderbolt pass-through. This means that you have just converted both of your very flexible TB3 ports (40Gbps TB3, with 10Gbps USB 3.2 gen 2 and pass-through of both DisplayPort and power) to something much less flexible. Even worse, if you have the MacBook Pro model with only two ports then you have to unplug this if you need to plug in a Thunderbolt device.
2. Higher risk of disconnects and glitches. I can't speak for the build quality of this particular product, but it seems to be a recurring comment in reviews of similar products. (Makes sense as you are connecting many cables to a rigid block that is holding on only due to the force in the TB3 ports.)
3. May not be compatible with other computers. (It needs two available ports at the same distance, with no other protruding parts blocking.)

Depending on your use case these may or may not be a problem. For me, the better solution was to buy one with a short integrated cable instead.
I got the I-tec nano dock (with ethernet, 3x 5Gbps USB 3.0, HDMI, card reader, audio minijack as well as power pass-through) for the equivalent of USD 50, but there are many other options, ranging from very cheap products from no-name brands to still affordable ones from more well-established brands e.g. Kingston Nucleum (USD 50 as well).

Soli said:

Pylons said:

No changes to low tiers! Most importantly, it still costs the insulting figure of $200 to upgrade from 128 GB to 256 GB! That's $1600/TB!
High-end SSDs cost $170-300/TB (for drives that are even faster than Apple's).

Right? And it's under 3lb? Do you know much I can get back from recycling 3lb of aluminium cans? Apple is literally raping us.

Can't see how this is relevant. There is no need to be rude, if that is what you meant.

commentzilla said:

henrybay said:

Let’s hope these new MacBooks have a keyboard with adequate KEY TRAVEL so we don’t have to pound our fingers on concrete - which is how the current butterfly keyboard feels. 

I've always been amazing at how hard some people type. Probably a carryover from manual and electric typewriters. In any case, I like the old keyboard too.

For me it’s not at all about typing hard.
It’s just that the lack of tactile response in the butterfly keys makes me type many more mistakes, so I have to compensate by typing slower. In contrast, Apple’s keys from 2012-2015 were fantastic in my opinion.