Kensington SD5760T Thunderbolt 4 Dock review: Only great on paper

Price When Reviewed

$279.99

Best Prices Today: Kensington Thunderbolt 4 Dual 4K Docking Station (SD5760T)

$286.28

$301.13

Put merely, the Kensington Thunderbolt 4 Dual 4K Docking Station (SD5760T) is a premium Thunderbolt 4 dock whose twin HDMI ports needs to be excellent for almost all of PC customers. On paper, anyway. Persistent stability issues imply that I can’t completely advocate it.

Prior to this, I’ve reviewed three Kensington Thunderbolt docks so far: the SD5500T, the SD5780T, and the SD5700T, all successful an Editors’ Choice awards. Of the three, solely the SD5500T included a pair of devoted show ports — DisplayPort, on this case. If you desire a full-featured Thunderbolt 4 dock with a pair of probably the most generally used HDMI ports as an alternative, the SD5760T is what you’re on the lookout for.

Remember, Thunderbolt 4 was designed as a tighter, extra restrictive Thunderbolt 3 specification to make sure compatibility and stability. This signifies that you’ll actually wish to personal a laptop computer with Thunderbolt 4 ports for the very best expertise. Thunderbolt 4 and USB 4 are just about an identical, so don’t anticipate any issues with an AMD Ryzen-powered laptop computer with USB4 inside.

Further studying: See our roundup of the best Thunderbolt docks to study competing merchandise.

Kensington SD5760 specs and options

The SD5760T is a giant dock; a bit of shy of 9 inches lengthy and 3.5 inches vast, with a chunky energy brick that’s a pair inches shorter. This is clearly a docking station, made out of the identical plastic building as different Kensington docks. I didn’t expertise any thermal points, nonetheless.

The dimension, although, accommodates quite a lot of ports. There’s possibly only a bit much less flexibility than the Plugable TBT3-UDZ, which incorporates each DisplayPort and HDMI show connections, but it surely’s greater than sufficient.

Mark Hachman / IDG

On the entrance of the Kensington SD5760T are a pair of 5Gbps USB-A ports, an upstream/daisy-chainable Thunderbolt 4 port, in addition to a second downstream Thunderbolt 4 port that provides as much as 96W of charging energy to your PC by way of a cable measuring about 2.5 toes. There’s additionally a (UHS-II) microSD and SD card slot, a 3.5mm audio/mic port, and an influence button for good measure.

On the again, the SD5760T contains two undisclosed HDMI ports able to 4K60 decision, two 10Gbps USB-A ports, a 10Gbps USB-C port, and gigabit Ethernet. Two Kensington locks, naturally, have been constructed into the facet of the dock. Everything is effectively marked.

How effectively does the Kensington SD5760T carry out?

The SD5760T’s charging capabilities are disappointing from one perspective: Both the USB-A and USB-C ports put out about 2.5W to 2.6W, which is sufficient to cost a smartphone, however solely slowly. Most opponents have a devoted port that can be utilized for telephone charging. On the opposite hand, if you happen to’re not utilizing the second devoted Thunderbolt 4 port (not the downstream Thunderbolt 4 port, which connects the dock to your PC) then that port can cost a telephone after which some. It places out 11.4W by our measurements, which can fast-charge a smartphone.

There’s one side of the SD5760T that I’ve considerations about: its stability. I usually evaluation a dock over the course of some days, evaluating it in real-world circumstances in addition to particular check environments.

What I discovered with the Kensington’s SD5760T stability

I started with the SD5760T that Kensington offered for evaluation.

Kensington’s SD5760T was usually steady to start with, although the dock disconnected thrice throughout a Teams name, throughout which the Ethernet cable was linked to the dock, together with the 2 check shows. But it additionally disconnected, then reconnected the shows, on two random events the subsequent morning. Thunderbolt docks aren’t at all times identified for constant operation, particularly with variances within the {hardware} and cables. Any disconnects and glitches are annoying, although, and these occurred a bit greater than I’d have appreciated. (Incidentally, Kensington attaches a three-year limited warranty to the SD5760T.)

Mark Hachman / IDG

Kensington does present a Dockworks software program utility, which I didn’t initially set up. The utility’s documentation doesn’t make any express guarantees about stability, simply “performance.” It’s there to assist you to prioritize both Ethernet versus Wi-Fi (in case your setup permits it) and permits the dock to reflect your Ethernet’s MAC deal with, for simpler networking. (Weirdly, I used to be in a position to obtain and set up Dockworks, however by no means really launch the appliance.) I gave the SD5760T an additional day of testing whereas the Dockworks utility was working (as confirmed by Windows Task Manager).

Surprisingly, the issue worsened. On a Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio, the disconnects occurred so incessantly that I thought-about disconnecting the dock totally. Similar points occurred when testing on different laptops. (I take advantage of a set of Intel Evo laptops, which Intel engineers check for Thunderbolt efficiency and different experiences.)

Occasionally I obtain a evaluation unit that proves faulty, so I requested Kensington for a alternative. I then examined the second SD5760T for a further 24 hours over the course of two days.

While the dock’s stability noticeably improved, it nonetheless dropped the show connections thrice throughout a 30-minute Microsoft Teams name. While that was the one time the alternative dock glitched, I believe that may be an excessive amount of for many customers. Our evaluation (and our lack of an Editor’s Choice award) is essentially primarily based upon this, versus my experiences with rival docks.

From a efficiency standpoint, each situations of the SD5760T dock carried out on par with its competitors when it comes to transferring knowledge over the bus and writing to an SSD. I used to be in a position to watch our 4K check video with out dropping any frames, even when writing to the SSD. The numerous ports carried out as anticipated, too.

Should you purchase the Kensington SD5760T?

Kensington’s SD5760T is priced a bit larger than the SD5500T, a Thunderbolt 3 dock that’s predicated on the DisplayPort normal. However, I believe the SD5760T’s twin HDMI ports can have the broadest attraction amongst Kensington’s Thunderbolt 4 docks. The SD5760T won’t help each port {that a} consumer will ask for, simply those that they’ll use most frequently.

That being mentioned, whereas the opposite Kensington docks we’ve reviewed have been wonderful, the SD5760T’s stability points make it an exception. Based upon my testing, I wouldn’t advocate it.