Sonnet's Thunderbolt 5 dock might be the best I've ever tested

Price When Reviewed

$499.99

Best Prices Today: Sonnet Echo 13 Thunderbolt 5 SSD Dock (2TB)

Sonnet’s Echo 13 Thunderbolt 5 SSD Dock carves out a brand new tier in each value and efficiency, blowing away typical Thunderbolt 4 docks as a brand new tier of ultrapremium Thunderbolt 5 docking stations takes maintain.

I totally anticipate extra Thunderbolt 5 docking stations to be launched. Hopefully, their efficiency meets and even exceeds that of the Sonnet Echo 13, which ought to place among the many best Thunderbolt docks that we advocate that you simply purchase.

Sonnet’s dock is the second Thunderbolt 5 docking station I’ve examined, and the primary with an built-in SSD. The built-in SSD drives up the fee considerably, however its efficiency sits effectively above a standard exterior SSD. (Intel’s unique reference design included an built-in SSD, my contacts say, so some producers adopted swimsuit.) It’s a good move, however, and one that could be a killer promoting level for this laptop computer docking station.

Sonnet’s dock measures about 8.5 inches lengthy and about 3.75 inches deep, and is barely thicker than an inch. There isn’t any choice to mount it vertically. The dock is product of plastic, with what seems to be venting on the highest and sides.

On the entrance of the dock is an influence button, with LEDs signaling energy and an lively Thunderbolt connection. The energy button must be held down for a second or two to show the dock on and off.

Sonnet clearly labeled each entrance ports: a 140W Thunderbolt 5 port that connects through a 31-inch Thunderbolt 5 cable, in addition to a second, 60W Thunderbolt 5 port. On the entrance is a 10Gbps USB-A port, a UHS-II SD and microSD card slot, and a headphone jack. On the rear of the dock are two extra Thunderbolt 5 ports, two extra 10Gbps USB-A ports (and a 5Gbps USB-A port, too), and an RJ45 connector for as much as 2.5Gbit Ethernet.

Mark Hachman / Foundry

Unfortunately, given the worth of the dock, there are not any devoted HDMI or DisplayPort ports, which can require you to buy extra cables. On the opposite hand, my 4K, 160Hz take a look at shows assist high-speed USB-C inputs, and for those who’re available in the market for such a dock, yours may as effectively. Remember, Thunderbolt 4’s base spec helps two 4K shows at 60Hz; Thunderbolt 5 helps three 4K, 144Hz shows. In this case, I merely reused current 40Gbps Thunderbolt 4 cables.

Two of my take a look at shows reliably linked at 4K, 144Hz decision, however not three. (The dock despatched content material to all three 4K shows, at 144Hz — however simply two at a time.)

Given the problems I had with this same laptop and a Kensington dock, I suspected that my take a look at laptop computer is perhaps the problem. At press time, there have been nearly no Thunderbolt 5 laptops to check with; after session with Sonnet’s engineers and different sources, I’ve concluded that the laptop computer’s Thunderbolt 5 controller could also be cut up between the 2 ports. That received’t enable the laptop computer to show on three exterior 4K144 shows, even when the dock permits it. I’ll be updating my take a look at laptop computer as quickly as I can.

Mark Hachman / Foundry

Note that whereas this dock is backwards-compatible with a Thunderbolt 4 laptop computer, you’ll obtain the most effective worth utilizing Thunderbolt 5 {hardware}. Sonnet notes that the slower Thunderbolt 4 I/O connection will throttle the SSD, which is a key promoting level for this dock.

Integrating an SSD gives advantages in addition to considerations

As somebody who usually leaves a USB key plugged into the dock to function a “sneakernet” of types, the concept of getting devoted storage in a dock appeals to me. Sonnet ships this dock with both a 1TB, 2TB, or 4TB SSD inside; my evaluate unit had a 2TB SSD.

You’d by no means realize it, although. My evaluate unit got here with the drive in an unformatted state, which means that it didn’t present up in File Explorer and basically didn’t “exist” so far as my PC was involved. Sonnet’s unique documentation stated nothing about this, and even an up to date model that the corporate despatched electronically barely talked about it or what to do.

It’s not exhausting to seek for remedy this downside; utilizing Windows’ personal search software and on the lookout for “create and format hard disk partitions” brings up the Disk Management window beneath the Windows Control Panel. That software exhibits the unformatted drive, which you’ll be able to right-click on to format and make the drive usable. A Thunderbolt dock, nevertheless, is basically plug-and-play, and formatting an exterior SSD most decidedly is just not. I’d advocate that Sonnet both pre-format the drive or embrace a devoted, detailed tutorial on how to take action.

Mark Hachman / Foundry

The drive is just not encrypted by default, although it’s surrounded by the dock itself and isn’t designed to be user-accessible. Windows does present drive encryption, known as BitLocker, although that’s a function that’s unique to Windows 10/11 Pro. (A Windows 10/11 Home machine can entry a BitLocker-encrypted exterior SSD through a devoted password that have to be typed in.) If you don’t encrypt the embedded SSD, that implies that there’s a drive that anybody can entry simply by docking their laptop computer. Could somebody malicious plant adware or malware on it? Possibly.

A conveyable SSD will also be picked up and carried with you, or secured elsewhere. This isn’t an argument for or in opposition to Sonnet’s dock! But it’s a record of issues to consider for those who’re contemplating shopping for it.

Sonnet does declare that the built-in SSD, linked through Thunderbolt 5, will probably be sooner than an SSD linked to your PC through USB. And boy, is it ever.

Sonnet Echo 13 Thunderbolt 5 SSD Dock: Performance

My earlier expertise with the Kensington SD5000T5 EQ Thunderbolt 5 Triple 4K Docking Station, the primary TB5 dock I’d examined, was a huge bust. At the time, I didn’t really feel assured in attempting to assign blame, since I used to be working with a brand new laptop computer, new cables, and a brand new dock. For this testing, I used the identical Maingear laptop computer (with a 14th-gen Core HX chip and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 GPU) that I did for that earlier take a look at.

My expertise with the Sonnet dock was much better, and what I’d anticipate from the Thunderbolt 5 expertise.

Mark Hachman / Foundry

Stability-wise, the Echo 13 demonstrated an honest quantity of what I name “display bounce.” Plugging a laptop computer into the dock — which was already linked to a pair of 4K, 144Hz shows — produced a scenario the place the shows flipped on and off and realigned themselves for a number of seconds. That’s not notably uncommon.

After that, all the things settled down, all of the shows remained linked, and the efficiency was easy and fairly steady, as you’d anticipate. But there have been a number of occasions that the dock struggled to mild one show after resuming from sleep, and infrequently (as soon as each couple of days) one show disconnected for a second, resumed, and continued usually. (Powering the dock on and off solved this.) I believe that this was the laptop computer’s fault. The SSD remained accessible always.

The dock is rated to produce 140W of output energy to a laptop computer. While my take a look at laptop computer, Maingear’s ML-17, helps Thunderbolt 5, it could possibly’t settle for the 140W of energy the dock theoretically offers. (Dell’s latest workstation-class laptops do, although I don’t have one to check.) So whereas I can’t affirm how a lot most energy the dock can present over the Thunderbolt cable, it did present 78W over the primary TB5 connection, and 56W (out of a rated 60W) through the opposite entrance Thunderbolt connection. That’s simply nice to fast-charge a smartphone.

(Note that the 85W handed through the Thunderbolt 5 cable won’t be enough to cost gaming laptops, akin to the primary few with Thunderbolt 5 connections. You’ll nonetheless must cost these units through their devoted chargers.)

During my streaming assessments, the place I stream a 4K, 60Hz video over the web through the Ethernet cable, all the things went completely — the dock dropped 6 out of 10,000 frames, which is negligible. I did discover a bit judder from concurrently enjoying a second video on a second show, which I usually didn’t do. But YouTube didn’t notice any dropped frames, so that may have been a problem with the GPU.

But the storage efficiency is revelatory. Sonnet describes the interior SSD’s velocity as “ridiculous” and this is among the few occasions I’d agree with the advertising copy. Ludicrous velocity, even!

I examine SSD speeds by connecting a normal SSD to the dock’s USB-C port and operating PCMark 10’s exterior benchmark, which reviews the switch information in megabytes per second in addition to an summary rating. To date, the perfect scores I’ve ever seen are about 135MB/s, with a rating of 850 or so. Directly linked to the laptop computer, my take a look at SSD delivers 160MB/s and a rating of 1,042.

Sonnet’s Echo 13 Thunderbolt 5 SSD Dock delivered information to the laptop computer at 279.8MB/s for a rating of 1,891. That’s a 75 % enhance in pure throughput! Put one other approach, when testing the drive utilizing CrystalDiskMark 8.0, sequential learn efficiency was 3,977MB/s, virtually double the learn efficiency of two,036MB/s from the Lexar SL600, an exterior 20Gbps SSD.

I additionally merely copy a folder of uncooked multimedia recordsdata from the SSD to the desktop. All of those assessments are pushing this information by means of the dock’s inner circuitry over the Thunderbolt 5 cable. About the most effective rating I’ve seen is 1 minute, 2 seconds, tacking on a further 4 extra seconds if I’m streaming video through the copy course of. Sonnet’s Echo 13 copied the recordsdata in 13.9 seconds, or 14.2 seconds whereas streaming. That’s a 78 % lower within the time taken by that take a look at alone!

It’s price noting that I nonetheless linked my conventional take a look at SSD to the dock’s USB-C port, and right here Sonnet’s dock wasn’t practically as spectacular: 106.2 MB/s, or a rating of 682. That’s decrease than the competitors, for those who determined to not use the interior SSD.

Throughout all of that, the dock was as cool as the opposite facet of the pillow — fairly actually. It didn’t even heat to the contact, in all probability as a result of it sounds prefer it has a quiet, lively fan cooling the dock.

Should you purchase the Sonnet Echo 13 Thunderbolt 5 SSD Dock?

The built-in SSD is a big price adder, and never essentially price it in case your storage wants are already served.

On the opposite hand, the efficiency of the dock’s SSD definitely makes up for it. A premium Thunderbolt dock plus the worth of a 2TB SSD works out to about $450, which isn’t an excessive amount of lower than what Sonnet is charging.

In common, this dock did all the things I’ve requested it to do. I’m nonetheless fighting a take a look at mattress that may adequately measure the ability a Thunderbolt 5 dock offers, and I’m fairly positive that the dock’s lack of ability to output to a few 4K/144 shows (versus simply two) will be the fault of the laptop computer, not the dock. We already know that not much Thunderbolt 5 hardware is available.

Otherwise, I’m extraordinarily happy with the Sonnet Echo 13 Thunderbolt 5 SSD Dock and would advocate it even within the present state of the market and at its present value. Sonnet’s Echo 13 gives each superb efficiency and dependable stability, and units the bar for different ultrapremium Thunderbolt 5 docks to path in its wake. Others will comply with, definitely. But proper now, Sonnet’s dock is the most effective I’ve ever examined.