Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsPowerful, small, hot, expensive - but totally worth it.
Reviewed in the United States on November 2, 2020
I was on the fence about buying this for a long time, as it's expensive and the only real advantage you get is needing only one Thunderbolt cable to your MacBook. Other docks are cheaper and provide similar ports, and this only provides one HDMI port.
But I'm super happy with this purchase. This is one of the nicest Anker products I've owned. It's smaller than I expected. It's super dense, super heavy, and feels sturdy and extremely well built. It handles everything I've thrown at it, powering my 4K screen at a smooth, reliable 60fps, while powering a ton of USB peripherals (USB-A and USB-C), gigabit ethernet, analog headphone out, and more. I bought this model specifically because I wanted to be able to daisy-chain Thunderbolt peripherals, and that works perfectly as well. (I have an Apple Thunderbolt-to-FireWire 800 adapter plugged into the Thunderbolt port, powering some older audio gear, and like everything else, it works perfectly.) My 2020 16" MacBook Pro's battery stays at 100% over an 8 hour workday at full brightness, despite this dock only putting out 85W over Thunderbolt.
My only gripes:
- This dock gets _hot_. Very hot. Hot enough that I'd be worried about leaving this in an unventilated area, or near a window in the sun, for instance. The case is made of metal, and it has no fan, so it can only radiate heat via the case. I've got mine sitting in a metal Rain Design mStand, which seems to help act as a bit of an external heatsink.
- It'd be great if this had an extra HDMI port, so I didn't need to use a USB-C-to-HDMI or Thunderbolt-to-HDMI adapter to power a second screen. But given that those can be as cheap as $10, this isn't a big issue.
- The analog audio out has a very strange small quirk - when audio playback starts, one channel starts a split-second before the other. My guess is that this was done to reduce noise when no audio is playing, or maybe reduce power usage, but it's just barely noticeable.
- $250 is still a bit much for only having to use one cable to power and connect your MacBook. I got this on sale and have no regrets, but would have hesitated a bit more at the full price point.