Tested: Plugable is the fast, affordable Thunderbolt 5 dock I recommend

Price When Reviewed

$299.95

Best Prices Today: Plugable 11-in-1 Thunderbolt 5 Docking Station

$299.95

$299.95

$299.95

$419.99

Plugable’s 11-in-1 Thunderbolt 5 (TBT-UDT3) docking station is a reasonably priced Thunderbolt 5 dock that may future-proof your PC for years to return. While it may not provide the devoted show ports of older docks, its built-in Thunderbolt Share delivers file sharing and a KVM-like expertise, without spending a dime.

What Plugable doesn’t provide is built-in storage or energetic cooling, saving your pockets some more money. Just needless to say you might have to make up for that by shopping for some further show cables.

Plugable TBT-UDT3: Design and construct

Plugable calls this dock the Plugable Thunderbolt 5 Dock with 3x Thunderbolt 5 ports, 140W Laptop Charging, or TBT-UDT3. It’s a moderately compact Thunderbolt 5 docking station, measuring 6.9 x 1.6 x 3.1 inches. I’ve at all times been considerably a fan of docks which make the most of vertical area, such because the HP Thunderbolt G4 Dock, just because my desk doesn’t have that a lot area on it. Plugable’s dock can match right into a vertical stand included within the package deal. This maximizes your obtainable desk area much more.

The TBT-UDT3 is made from aluminum and ABS plastic. These two supplies weave their approach out and in of the chassis. You’ll discover metallic coating the highest and backside (if mounted flat, not vertically) which feels essential. The dock was pretty heat inside my air-conditioned workplace, utilizing two 4K shows related through the dock’s included Thunderbolt 5 cable. (That cable measures 39 inches, or 1 meter lengthy.) Some TB5 docks embrace energetic cooling, with an exterior fan; the TBT-UDT3 doesn’t. That’s presumably a nook Plugable lower, nevertheless it doesn’t appear to have affected its stability in any respect.

Mark Hachman / Foundry

I often confer with docking stations with out devoted show ports as hubs, not docks. In this case, Plugable’s TBT-UDT3 contains two Thunderbolt 5 ports on the rear of the dock, and one in entrance. All three can be utilized for show connections.

Make positive you select the right cable for the job. A Thunderbolt 4 dock at 60Hz can use a USB-C to HDMI adapter that helps 4K60 output. That works effective with this Thunderbolt 5 dock, too. But a TB5 dock (like this one) ought to output a 4K show at 144Hz per port–you’ll want a slightly more expensive cable (about $25 apiece).

Specifically, Plugable’s dock places its energy button on entrance, lit by a shiny white LED which, by accident or not, leaks into the interior ports, giving them a faint glow and making them simpler to insert connections inside a dim room. The entrance of the dock additionally contains each a microSD and SD card slot at 312MB/S UHS-II speeds, a 10Gbps USB-A port, a Thunderbolt 5 port, plus a 3.5mm headphone jack. On the rear are two extra Thunderbolt 5 ports, each a 5Gbps and 10Gbps USB-A port, the downstream TB5 connection to the PC, a 2.5Gbps Ethernet jack, and two lock ports.

Mark Hachman / Foundry

Plugable’s dock doesn’t actually provide charging capabilities — one rear USB-A port provides 7.5W — however you’ll be able to actually plug in a telephone to an unused USB-C/Thunderbolt 5 port, which is rated for 15W of energy for a telephone or an exterior system of some type. It truly offered 13.9W underneath load. That was once sufficient to fast-charge a smartphone like a Samsung Galaxy S19, however can’t actually sustain with the high-speed charging energy utilized by current iPhones or Android telephones, which fast-charge at 45W or greater.

Keep in thoughts that the total charging capabilities of Thunderbolt 5 go as much as 240W. This dock faucets out at 140W. On the opposite hand, Thunderbolt 5 is (for now) confined to gaming laptops, and people laptops usually pull near 400W or extra whereas gaming underneath load. Put one other approach, even 240W isn’t going to chop it for gaming, proper now. That energy provide could be appropriate for tomorrow’s content-creation/mild gaming pocket book, however not now.

Mark Hachman / Foundry

Plugable’s dock additionally contains an surprising bonus: Thunderbolt Share, a expertise that got here and went with out loads of fanfare from the cell neighborhood. Using Thunderbolt Share, two PCs can share information over a Thunderbolt connection, or two PCs can share a single display. However, Thunderbolt Share requires that the PCs obtain the Thunderbolt Share app. One of the units should even have a Thunderbolt Share license — or, on this case, the dock. Only then is Thunderbolt Share allowed to work. (You can see our video demonstration of Thunderbolt Share, here.)

Plugable TBT-UDT3: Performance

For these checks, I used Razer’s Blade 18, which features a Thunderbolt 5 port in addition to a separate Thunderbolt 4 connection. On that laptop computer, Plugable’s dock appeared virtually completely steady. It related to a pair of 4K160 shows on the dock’s rated velocity of 144Hz, my check mattress’s default configuration.

It additionally related completely to a 3rd 4K160 show at 144Hz, too, because it ought to. In this situation, nonetheless, my check laptop computer’s show wouldn’t mild up till I rebooted. After it did so, all three exterior shows lit up at 144Hz, plus the laptop computer’s show. The laptop computer/dock mixture couldn’t deal with streaming 4K60 video to all shows, however static Web pages loaded with no problem.

I additionally related it to my every day laptop computer, with a Thunderbolt 4 port, and I had no points utilizing Plugable’s identical dock with the identical 4K shows at 60 Hz.

When I by accident powered off the dock when attempting to insert it into its vertical stand, there was a little bit of “panic,” the place the shows cycled by way of and flipped on and off for just a few seconds. That was person error, nonetheless, and the dock and the related shows labored fairly nicely thereafter. While the dock had some points citing the shows when related to an older TB4 laptop computer that was resuming from sleep, that drawback didn’t manifest on the Blade 18 and its TB5 port.

I’ve been testing Thunderbolt docks for several years using a standardized methodology. Thunderbolt 5, nonetheless, requires an replace to my check procedures.

I stream 4K video at 60Hz throughout two shows, then three — Plugable’s dock dealt with it like a champ with out dropping greater than a handful of frames. Streaming knowledge from an connected SSD, although, is a little more difficult with a higher-bandwidth Thunderbolt 5 dock. OWC kindly offered us with an Envoy Ultra SSD, rated at Thunderbolt 5 speeds. That places extra stress on the dock itself to maintain up.

To date, there simply haven’t been that many Thunderbolt 5 docks obtainable. Most of my evaluations cowl Thunderbolt 3 and 4, so this dock, together with the Sonnet Echo 13 Thunderbolt 5 Dock, symbolize a small cadre of the quickest docks obtainable. As it occurs, the efficiency of the 2 is roughly comparable.

I ran PCMark’s storage check in opposition to the Envoy Ultra, each immediately related and in addition related to a Thunderbolt 5 port on the dock. Directly related, the Envoy Ultra returned a bandwidth rating of 469MB/s or a rating of 3,202. Connected to the dock’s TB5 port, efficiency dropped to 437MB/s or a rating of two,920. That’s a 7 % drop, and principally equivalent to the 436MB/s bandwidth rating that the Sonnet Echo 13 yielded when the Envoy Ultra was related to its Thunderbolt 5 port.

While streaming the 2 4K movies throughout the built-in Ethernet port, efficiency dropped to 402.77 MB/s, since a few of the bandwidth was taken up by the Ethernet port.

Only my folder copy check, which measures how lengthy it takes to repeat a bundle of information from an SSD by way of the dock to the desktop, confirmed any actual distinction from the Sonnet: 13.9 seconds for the Sonnet, and 16.9 seconds for the Plugable dock, or 14.2 seconds vs 18.96 seconds whereas streaming.

I examined Thunderbolt Share, which crashed the primary time I attempted it. (I didn’t discover that OneDrive was syncing within the background.) Using one laptop computer to regulate one other labored effective. I used to be capable of switch my folder of information in about 54 seconds, barely sooner than my Thunderbolt 4 dock checks. That’s cheap, provided that each a Thunderbolt 4 laptop computer and a Thunderbolt 5 laptop computer have been related to the TBT-UDT3.

Mark Hachman / Foundry

It could be value noting that that the rival Sonnet Echo 13 features a 2TB built-in SSD and prices $439 at press time; Plugable’s dock doesn’t embrace an SSD, and OWC’s Envoy Ultra (2TB) prices about $300 alone at press time. On the opposite hand, the interior bandwidth of the Sonnet’s inner SSD was 279.84MB/s, considerably lower than the Plugable + OWC SSD mixture.

The bandwidth of Sonnet’s inner SSD is much like what you may anticipate of exterior gaming SSDs. On the opposite hand, the learn and write speeds of the OWC Envoy Ultra plus the Thunderbolt 5 connection push upwards into the speeds of a good internal PCIe4 SSD, and that’s value one thing, too.

The one factor I didn’t check is how nicely this dock accommodates an exterior GPU. That’s a functionality that’s in-built (once more) to Thunderbolt 5, however I don’t suppose an eGPU makes a compelling argument but if TB5 ports are solely discovered inside gaming PCs already geared up with discrete GPUs.

Plugable TBT-UDT3: Conclusion

I’d, sure. Generally I hope for premium Thunderbolt docks to be within the $250 vary or a bit decrease, and $299 appears fairly cheap for a premium dock — although you might have so as to add show adapter cables to that worth. A two-year guarantee is included. Though this dock does provide entry to a few shows, you may discover that connecting two shows plus a high-speed SSD works finest for you. Interestingly, all the Thunderbolt 5 docks I’ve seen do not add devoted show ports, as their TB4 and TB3 choices did.

Don’t overlook about Thunderbolt Share, both. It’s not a expertise you may use typically; in spite of everything, you’ll be able to at all times join a tough drive to the dock, copy a file to the drive, substitute the laptop computer with one other, and obtain the file. Still, it’s an fascinating twist that almost all docks don’t provide.

If you’re excited about future-proofing your PC, although, the mix of the high-speed show choices Thunderbolt 5 gives, plus Thunderbolt Share, and the extra efficiency a high-speed exterior TB5 SSD gives makes this dock actually intriguing. I actually appreciated the pliability the SSD contained in the Sonnet Echo 13 provided, however Plugable gives another with a distinct however very viable perspective.