
There’s gigabit ethernet and a 3.5mm audio jack, but good luck telling the USB 3.1 and USB 2.0 Type A ports apart-they’re not labeled. Ports are adequately spaced out around the flat, black plastic cube, with HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort 1.4 ports providing a stable 4K/60Hz experience to both of my 4K displays. Perhaps because of the small form factor, the GTD300 gets noticeably hot, but not uncomfortably so in our opinion.īelkin’s Thunderbolt 3 Dock Core arrived in bare-bones packaging, and the product is equally unadorned: It’s a smartly designed “powered” Thunderbolt 3 travel dock.Īt a nearly square 5.2 x 6.5 x 1.5 inches, the Thunderbolt Dock Core black doesn’t take up much room, and the included 8-inch Thunderbolt 3 cord provides ample length for flexibility. Some of Amazon’s customer reviews are slightly confusing: In our experience the ethernet port worked as expected, as did the USB-A port.

(Of course, we’d have preferred a 10Gbps port, at least.) If you’re okay using the USB port for a mouse or keyboard, rather than for high-speed external storage, the GTD300 will suit you fine. Ports are minimal: one HDMI 2.0 port, one DisplayPort 1.2 port, one 5Gbps USB-A port, and gigabit ethernet port. On its underside, a green plastic shell conceals a nook to store the dock’s short, 5-inch cord when not in use. IOgear’s plastic dock measures just 2.2 x 0.91 x 4.06 inches, and is among the smallest we’ve tested, so it neatly fits into a backpack for travel. The Thunderbolt 3 dock is bus-powered, however, which means you’ll want your laptop to be plugged in for best results, though the hub itself doesn’t require its own charger. There’s a simple rule for Black Friday this year: if you see a Thunderbolt dock you want, buy it! Don’t wait - it will likely be gone soon.Īlthough it’s listed as a travel dock, the IOgear GTD300 serves as a very good regular work companion.

No, that’s not too many! In part, that’s because supply-chain shortages are putting a serious crimp in the availability of Thunderbolt docks and hubs. We’ve updated our picks as of November 2021, adding the Anker Apex 12-in-1 Thunderbolt 4 Dock, Sonnet Technologies Echo 11,īlack Friday shopping advice: We’ve recommended a few Thunderbolt docks and hubs in each category. (If you don’t have one, that’s fine - just buy a Thunderbolt dock instead.) The latter is useful if you’re among the small number of those who own dedicated Thunderbolt displays.

We define a Thunderbolt hub as Thunderbolt in, Thunderbolt-out. We define a Thunderbolt dock as one that supplies the ports you need for legacy devices, like USB-A and HDMI.
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If you want to learn more about the benefits of a Thunderbolt dock, what to look for when buying one, or how to know whether your laptop will support one, look here as well. The longer answer, explaining the differences, may be found within our Thunderbolt buying guide below our recommendations. What’s the difference between Thunderbolt 3, Thunderbolt 4, and USB4? The simple answer is that they’re all similar. The bandwidth behind Thunderbolt 4 is enough to drive those displays and shuttle data back and forth between peripherals without causing your display to flicker or your video stream to stutter. Intel helped launch the updated Thunderbolt 4 specification in July 2020 as part of its 11th-gen “Tiger Lake” Core laptops, and the specification has become more popular on productivity laptops. If your laptop includes a Thunderbolt port, chances are it supports the Thunderbolt 3 or Thunderbolt 4 standard, both of which provide 40Gbps. You can also use Thunderbolt to enable an external GPU for your PC.

While a USB-C hub can support a single 4K display, often at an eye-wearying 30Hz refresh rate, Thunderbolt docks can support up to two 4K displays at a comfortable 60Hz.
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That primarily matters where displays are concerned, but can affect the number and type of external hard drives, SSDs, and other peripherals that can your PC can connect to. USB-C hubs are far cheaper, but they offer far less bandwidth.
