Belkin Thunderbolt 4 Dock Pro, Single 8K @ 60hz, Dual 4K
Belkin Thunderbolt 4 Dock Pro, Single 8K @ 60hz, Dual 4K Display Compatible, 2 x Thunderbolt 4 Port, 2 x HDMI Port, 90W Power Delivery PD, Audio In/Out, Compatible with MacBook Pro, XPS, and More
From the brand
| Dimensions: | 20 x 13 x 5 cm; 1.73 Kilograms |
| Model: | 93989 |
| Manufacture: | Belkin |
| Dimensions: | 20 x 13 x 5 cm; 1.73 Kilograms |
| Origin: | China |
I love this product. I’ve only had it since yesterday but it’s been a pretty flawless setup for me. One 4k 60hz monitor, audio interface, midi keyboard, webcam, and laptop cooling pad all go into this and are all fed by a single USB C cable into my MacBook Air m2 for faster charging than the default brick gives me. I have had no issues getting the monitor to work properly as other reviewers have noted, but that could be the newer chip?
The downside is that my work laptop needs 120w power and so I didn’t quite eliminate cable clutter, as I still have to use the existing power supply, but it’s freed up every other port.
Doesn’t make any noise, doesn’t seem to get too hot, it just sits there being unobtrusive.
In terms of build quality and so on, the dock itself is aluminium and gloss plastic. It looks great, though it has no vertical mounting options, so it’s going to take up some desk real estate. That said, it has a reasonable heft that looks and feels nice.
It is powered by a proprietary power adaptor with one of the biggest power bricks I’ve ever seen – 155x62x32mm – this thing as an absolute unit. The dock plug is a hefty thing too – it sticks out the back of the dock such that you’re not going to be able to put the dock within about 60mm of a vertical surface.
Unfortunately, I’ve not managed to bottleneck the Thunderbolt 4 port transferring files, instead being limited by the speed of my SD card (180MB/s write, 235MB/s read), (which is nowhere near the 5000MB/s theoretically possible).
Note that there is 1 Thunderbolt 4 port, a USB-C 3.1 port, 3-.5mm jack and SD card slot on the front and another Thunderbolt 4 port on the back, in addition to the two HDMI 2.0 ports, 2 USB-A 3.1, 2 USB-A 2.0 ports and gigabit ethernet port.
It comes with a Thunderbolt 4 cable. If, like me, you thought that all USB-C cables are born alike, it turns out that this is very much not the case; the thunderbolt 4 cable was two orders of magnitude faster than the generic USB-C cable I started using.
Slightly surprisingly, the Thunderbolt 4 ports charge at up to 90W, rather than 100W the standard is capable of.
I don’t have two 8K displays to connect to it. I did, however, have problems with an old 1080P HDMI 1 monitor; it simply wasn’t picked up by my laptop though the dock. I’m not sure why, but I see no reason that it shouldn’t have worked, and so worth mentioning.
A couple of other points worthy of note:
1) The dock needs to be on for it to work; sounds obvious I know, but if you don’t press the on button, nothing will happen.
2) Secondly, and less prosaically, with a laptop powered by the front Thunderbolt port, and my phone plugged into the rear one, the phone is not detected nor charged. If the phone is plugged into the front USB-C 3.1 port, it charges and is detected. I’m not sure why the device exhibits this behaviour, but it only seems capable of connecting via one of the thunderbolt ports at once.
This is a great docking station.
It is pretty heavy and sturdy build with a really nice design.
The docking station is made in matt aluminum and the front and back sides are finished in high gloss black.
The docking station is really fast and has so many ports.
On the front there are 2x USB Type-C ports , SD card reader and 3.5mm audio in/out and a Power ON/OFF button.
The USB Type-C are 1xThunderbolt 4 port and 1x USB Type-C 3.1 Gen 2 port with 90W PD fast charging.
On the back there are 2x HDMI ports,1x Gigabit Lan port, Thunderbolt 4 port and 4x USB Type-A ports.
The USB Type-A ports are 2x USB Type-A 3.1 ports and 2x USB Type-A 2.0 ports.
There is also a 22V/5.45A power in port and there is a 120W power supply that you connect to the port.
The power supply comes with 3 different power cables for connecting to mains sockets.
There are cables with 3-PIN UK plug, EU plug and Swiss 3 PIN plug.
This is really good as you don’t need travel adapters to use the docking station when you travel.
Both the front and the back Thunderbolt 4 ports are 40Gbps ,which is great for data transfer,like connecting external SSD or to connect monitor that has USB Type-C port.
I really like that I can connect my MacBook only with one Thunderbolt 4 cable and use the same cable for everything.
The cable gets my MacBook charged and also transfers the data from and to all my devices.
I use the 0.8M Thunderbolt 4 cable that comes with the docking station connected to my MacBook and I have an external hard drive with another 40Gbps/100W rated USB Type-C cable.
I also have my phone connected to the USB Type-C 3.1 Gen 2 to transfer pictures and videos to my MacBook and also a monitor connected via 8K/60Hz HDMI cable.
The reason to use such an HDMI cable is to be able get the full 5K/60Hz resolution supported by the MacBook.
The docking station supports dual 4K displays via the HDMI ports and you can also connect a third display via the second Thunderbolt 4 port ,but both of these can be used only if you laptop supports them.
Some M1 MacBooks like mine support only one external screen so keep that in mind.
The price of this Thunderbolt 4 Dock Pro docking station is 399.99 at the moment ,which is a pretty high price.
The main reasons for the price are the Thunderbolt 4 ports and 40Gbps high speed data transfer that comes with them.
When you have big data files to transfer on a daily basis you need something really fast.
When you are multitasking or using external monitor as well, then you need something exactly like this.
Recommend it.
Hopefully my review was Helpful for you.
I’m not going to regurgitate the features of this dock as you can easily read the product description yourself. In terms of usage, it seems to be a lot more compatible with Windows than MacOS. Depending on which model and year of Mac you have, you’ll potentially have different usable features. This means that you need to carefully read through the product specs to see what you can do with your particular Mac.
For Windows, however, it’s a breeze! Your laptop does require a USB-C port to work with this, so make sure it has this before purchasing. If the port also supports thunderbolt, then you’ll get better performance!
I think this is actually a really good dock to be honest, as you have everything you could need! You can have this dock setup on your table with all your peripherals and monitors, and then take your laptop around with you when not plugged into the dock. There’s only one wire you need to connect and disconnect from your laptop to use the dock, so it’s super simple to use!
Be careful with how you use the USB ports, as the USB2.0 ports are designed to be used for keyboard and mouse only. Anything that involves data transfer should be done via the USB3.0 ports for maximum speeds!
Overall, I think this is a great dock for Windows users, especially if your laptop supports Thunderbolt. It is expensive, but Belkin is a trusted brand and I don’t doubt the build quality of this so it should last for years to come! Would recommend!
This is a next level docking station. It has in total, 12 ports including the host connection, with up to 90W of charging power.
The dock is made primarily of a metal shell with plastic faceplates on the front and back. It’s fairly unobtrusive and should fit in well on most desks, and the design does look pretty slick. The dock is made for horizontal use, with rubber feet on the bottom to prevent slippage. The host port is on the front of the dock, making it easy to use.
The 2 no. USB-A 2.0 ports are a bit slow by modern standards and seem to me to be a little bit of a waste. I do however really like the Dual HDMI for older monitors, which means i can finally connect two monitors to my laptop.
Functionally it works really well. i have tested all of the USB ports, the SD card reader and the 3.5mm audio connector and they all do exactly as you would expect.
For me the only real issue with this dock station, is the price, it really does seem a little on the high side to me. That said, if you are looking for a dock with these features, it certainly performs and does the job well.
I have used other docks before are lot cheaper which work fine as a multi dock but this is a next step up.
It comes with power leads for several countries including the UK which attach to a power pack so this will be able to help connect to serious hardware.
I have tested it via my Macbook Pro 2021.
The main areas I have tested so far are the USB ports which run very well. I have run a mouse and keyboard through it as well as a external hard drive. And these have connected up and work very smoothly through this.
I did look to connecting it up to a monitor but had the wrong kind of connection for this, But I hope to buy a Mac Studio soon and two new monitors so plan on using it for these and may come back to this review to ass how well that works then.
In itself it looks sleek and professional and made of high grade materials. and looks like it will last a very long time and it pretty well future proofed. So I look forward to using this for a very long time.
There is, in theory, a lot to like, a couple of bits to love and a few things to dislike (the price of course being the main one!) with the new pro 4 dock from Belkin.
Design wise, it’s incredibly sleek and professional looking with a mix of aluminium and plastic. It’s AC adapter is a bit of a brick but can thankfully be masked away pretty easily due to the cord length.
The front has some pretty standard io at first glance with a few surprises at closer inspection — a multi functional SD card reader, 3.5MM audio jack in and out, USB-c 3.1 gen 2 port which supports fast charging and upstream (for connecting to your laptop) thunderbolt 4 port, next to a power button that allows you to stop the dock from delivering any power to devices when not in use (which I personally find pretty useful!).
At the back, we’ve got power in, 2 HDMI ports (both supporting HDMI 2.0) , a downstream (for connecting to an external accessory or monitor) thunderbolt 4.0 port, a gigabit ethernet port and 4 USB-A ports (only two of these are 3.1 ports, with the other two being 2.0 ports).
It can supply up to 90W pass through charging of a device, which is actually on the lower end when comparing against other similar priced docks. If you’re the type of power user that this level of dock is aimed at, this could well be a limiting factor depending on what beast of a machine is supposed to be connected to the dock!
The dock can be fiddly when being used by Mac users. You won’t be able to make the most of both HDMI ports simultaneously for Mac Users, you’ll need to user a thunderbolt port for one display and a HDMI port for the other. This massively sways use of the dock towards favouring PC users, or a setup where Mac use is the very occasional use. This with the price bracket in mind is disappointing and very much worth bearing in mind.
With the right laptop mind, you could in theory get a total of three displays connected at once — which is an impressive feat for a dock this size. The dock can support a single display at 8k (upto 30 hz), or dual 4k at 60hz, so it’s display options and flexibility is likely where this dock stands out to other competitors currently.
For the right setup, this is a lovely professional dock. It seems to be tailored more towards adaptable office setups rather than homes with little additions like the power button and chosen ports but assuming you’ve got the right setup to make the most out of it (I personally wouldn’t consider this dock if my main driver was a Mac), it could well be a contender !