Accell Thunderbolt 4 Dock review: Excellent specs that don't generally produce

Greatest Price ranges Today: Accell Thunderbolt 4 Docking Station (K160B-002G)

$357.00

$372.99

If you’re considering buying Accell’s Thunderbolt 4 Docking Station (K160B-002G) take into consideration no matter whether its blend of ports matches your needs. This dock leans a very little additional greatly on Thunderbolt ports remaining applied as display screen ports, which may well not be what you’re seeking for.

The Accell K160B-002G actions 7.75 x 3 x 1 inches, and weighs a rated .9 lbs .. Like all powered docks, there’s a reasonably hefty electricity brick that accompanies it. Accell’s dock is a bit different in that it contains each a U.S. and a Uk power cord inside of the box.

Macs have typically most popular making use of Thunderbolt connections straight to the exhibit, these kinds of as in Apple’s Studio Display screen. PCs have generally favored both HDMI or DisplayPort. Accell’s Thunderbolt 4 Docking Station splits the variation: one particular DisplayPort 1.4 port, and two downstream Thunderbolt 4 ports, able of 15W charging.

To use a pair of (common) 4K60 Computer system displays, that usually means purchasing a USB-C/Thunderbolt adapter to HDMI or DisplayPort, or an precise Thunderbolt-HDMI cable. You could locate that it’s not really worth the stress, though—to give you an instance, I requested this QGeem USB-C to HDMI adapter from Amazon to exam the operation. The description includes the words and phrases “USB-C,” “Thunderbolt 3,” and “4K,” but the cable only created a 4K30 signal on a single check laptop computer, and a 1080p signal on another. Purchasing a dock with a devoted port could help you save you some angst and an extra $10 to $15 or so to purchase the adapter or cable.

Be aware: This assessment is aspect of our roundup of best Thunderbolt docks. Go there for a lot more data about competing goods and our getting tips.

Mark Hachman / IDG

In any other case, the dock features a good blend of ports. On the entrance, the upstream (to your notebook) Thunderbolt port sits along with a headphone jack, a 5Gbps USB 2. port (with 7.5W charging) and a comprehensive-sized SD 4. UHS-II card slot. On the rear you will obtain a gigabit ethernet port, 3 10Gbps USB-A ports (4.5W charging), the DisplayPort 1.4 port, the two USB-C (Thunderbolt 4) downstream ports (which supply 15W) and the electrical power slot. The included Thunderbolt 3 twine is about 2.5 toes.

Two positive aspects are hidden in just Accel’s specs: Initially, the dock utilizes DisplayPort 1.4 (compared to 1.2), which simply just provides a lot more bandwidth, especially if if you are intrigued in an external 4K exhibit but jogging at speeds around 60Hz—the spec supports 32.4Gbps, in essence a 4K exhibit managing at 144Hz for gaming. The dock also pushes 96 watts downstream to your laptop computer, which will quickly deal with nearly all productiveness laptops as perfectly as some “content creation” laptops with a GPU, furnished it can acknowledge that much electricity by its Thunderbolt port. Nevertheless, this is a forward-seeking dock.

The dock alone would seem perfectly-manufactured, effectively metal but with a sheath of plastic masking the prime and bottom. It will warm less than load, but not unreasonably so. Regretably, the dock did not produce the rated energy from possibly of the USB-A ports, only about 2.5W. That was ample to demand a smartphone, but not in which it should really be.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Efficiency in any other case commonly fulfilled expectations. Participating in secured content worked as predicted, and the dock dropped 15 frames out of 10,000 when streaming 4K content from YouTube by using ethernet. (Our existing take a look at set up does not contain superior-refresh-price 4K displays to examination the DisplayPort port at its comprehensive ability, nor does our laptop accept 96W as a result of the Thunderbolt enter.) The ports all ran at their expected speeds.

We were both happy and somewhat dissatisfied with this dock, which features a wide range of execs and drawbacks. The price tag is a little bit bigger than its level of competition, far too.