We already presented a nice USB-C dock from CalDigit last time, but it had the limitation of only being able to display the same image on the two connectable monitors. This limitation is due to Apple’s refusal to implement MST (Multi Stream Transport) in macOS for the DisplayPort, although this is actually required by the standard.
For such applications, you have to go straight to the Thunderbolt dock on the Mac (which is, of course, three times as expensive). But what do we get for the money? Kensington goes all out here and offers everything we could want:
- 4 Thunderbolt 4 port (one to the computer, the others freely assignable)
- 4 USB-A ports
- 1 Ethernet port
- 1 SD card slot
- 1 audio port
The dock also offers 90 watts of power delivery and also comes with a corresponding power supply. So you have directly a new stationary power supply and the original Apple copy to take along on trips.
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If you’re complaining that the dock doesn’t have any display outputs, you haven’t looked closely: we can use the three free Thunerbolt ports as we want, and they naturally offer support for external monitors: two times 4K are possible, or even one time 8K (at 30 Hz). All you need is a USB-C to HDMI or DisplayPort cable for little money if you use a monitor that does not have a Thunderbolt input. We think this is the smarter solution, because it saves both additional adapters and outputs (HDMI), which many no longer use.
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