★★★★☆
The OWC Thunderbolt Go Dock was designed to be taken on trips, which is unusual for a hub that uses this extremely fast connection standard. While portable, it still has room for eleven ports in a range useful types, including Thunderbolt 4 (of course), USB-A, HDMI, USB-C and more.
I put the dock through a series of real-world tests to see how well it performs.
The most important feature of the new Hyper Thunderbolt 4 Power Hub is something it doesn’t have: a giant power brick. The three-port hub offers 40Gbps data transfers as its rivals do, but in a more compact form.
The device was unveiled in summer 2022 and went through crowdfunding but is only now available for all to buy.
The Satechi Thunderbolt Slim Hub brings a trio of very high-speed ports to a Mac, plus it has a USB-A port for other accessories. It’s good enough to earn a CES Innovation Award.
Satechi also used the Consumer Electronics Show to announce a 6-port charger and a USB4 NVMe SSD enclosure.
Kensington used CES 2023 to take the wraps off a Thunderbolt 4 docking station that adds eleven ports to Mac or PC.
The accessory-maker also announced at the trade show a smaller, portable USB4 hub with six ports, plus a portable USB-C hub with six ports and a built-in wireless charger.
The Kensington SD5780T is a desktop dock that connects to a Mac over Thunderbolt 4 at up to 40 Gbps. And it includes almost a dozen ports of various types to enable to everything from a mouse to a high-speed external drive.
The dock can also fast charge a MacBook.
Some computer setups go for splashy color while others like to be monochromatic — often black and white, or one or the other. In today’s featured setup, an iOS and macOS software developer sets a Studio Display in a black-and-white scheme that hides an M1 MacBook Pro.
And they go for quality sound in the mix, too, with one of the world’s most popular USB microphones and an exceptional pair of open-back headphones.
HP rolled out a new 4K monitor at its Amplify Executive Forum Thursday, calling it “the world’s first IPS Black display with Thunderbolt 4 technology.”
The HP Z32k G3 4K USB-C Display, “coming soon” at an unspecified price, should appeal to creators and product developers, the company said.
That’s because it will offer strong color accuracy and high contrast in addition to the speed and versatility of Thunderbolt 4 connectivity.
A 3-meter version of the Apple’s Thunderbolt 4 cable can now be ordered. The extra-long cable connects Macs to peripherals at up to 40Gbps and 100W of power.
It’s $159, or two or three times the cost of a high-quality 2-meter Thunderbolt 4 cable from rival companies. Trouble is, the 3-meter cable doesn’t have any direct competition.
The Apple Tax is real. Apple really does overcharge for some of its products. Nowhere is that clearer than with Apple’s 1.8-meter Thunderbolt 4 cable that costs double what it should.
But you don’t have to pay the tax. Not for high-quality cables, anyway. I tested 2-meter Thunderbolt cables from OWC and Plugable to show they do the job for a lot less money.
With a dozen ports, the Belkin Connect Pro Thunderbolt 4 Dock lets users connect a Mac to multiple accessories for data, video, Ethernet and power. All through a single high-speed cable connection.
Belkin also introduced a Thunderbolt 4 cable capable of handling data transfers at 40 Gbps.
