Elgato today announced that its upcoming Thunderbolt 3 Dock, which was first introduced in January at CES, will be available starting on Tuesday, June 6 for $299.95.
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Elgato's Thunderbolt 3 Dock, designed to work with the new 13 and 15-inch MacBook Pro models Apple introduced back in October, features three USB 3.0 ports, a Gigabit Ethernet port, two Thunderbolt USB-C ports, one DisplayPort with DisplayPort 1.2 support, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a 3.5mm microphone input jack.
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The dock is able to provide up to 85 watts of power and can charge a MacBook Pro while also offering multiple ports for connecting displays and accessories. It can drive one 5K display at 60Hz through the Thunderbolt 3 port or two 4K displays simultaneously at 60Hz using the DisplayPort and a Thunderbolt 3 port.
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- DisplayPort output: up to 4096 x 2160 pixels at 60 Hz
- Thunderbolt 3 output: up to 5120 x 2880 pixels at 60 Hz
- Dual displays: up to 4096 x 2160 pixels at 60 Hz each
- 4K60 over HDMI 2.0 supported using active adapters (not included) via USB-C and DisplayPort
USB-C accessories are powered with up to 15 watts and the dock's USB-A ports can charge an iPhone or iPad at full speed. Elgato's dock is priced similarly to other Thunderbolt 3 docks on the market, with a 1.6ft Thunderbolt 3 cable included in the $299.95 price tag.
It can be purchased in the U.S., Europe, and Australia starting on June 6 from the Elgato website.
Top Rated Comments
Problem is, people are seeing it as an essential solution to the lack of regular ports on the MBP where, previously, they would have got a $50 USB hub. Unfortunately, Apple have built themselves a little echo chamber full of people who think USB-A, DisplayPort and HDMI are somehow obsolete.
As per my previous post: if you just want some USB ports and a HDMI port, get a USB-C dock for a lot less - only get TB3 if you need the bandwidth and dual display capability.
[doublepost=1495662381][/doublepost]Doesn't your Logitech stuff support their "unifying receiver" technology so you can use the same dongle for both?
So I'll get whichever I can find cheaper/on sale. (Though this one looks much nicer, IMHO.)
But I can't believe neither includes an SD card reader ... Such an obvious omission. There's probably 100 times more people needing that compared to eSATA.
My main issue is my logitech mouse and keyboard dongles interfere with each other so need to be spaced out a bit. Would prefer to put both on the back, but one on the front may work. Has all the other ports I need, the none wasted.
Unfortunately, thunderbolt doesn't work like that - its a "bus" system rather than a "star" system - i.e. you can chain multiple TB devices in the line but you can't have "branches". So you'll always have, at most, one TB "in" and one TB "out" per device.
They could, potentially, add another USB-C (non-TB3*) out, and the Henge dock that has already been mentioned offers one (but isn't yet available).
However, I think the current reality is that peoples' #1 priority is getting their legacy ports back - not gaining extra USB-C or Thunderbolt connectors. Also, as per my previous post, by the time you've hung a 4k display and some USB 3 devices off a dock like this you'll probably want to add any further TB3 devices direct to the Mac to get the full bandwidth.
...and for anything that doesn't need the full bandwidth you're probably better off staying with USB3 (whether its over an A- or a C- connector).
[*We need a name for a USB-C port that isn't a TB3 port since, technically, TB3 ports are USB-C ports...]