Elgato Thunderbolt 3 Dock

Elgato Thunderbolt 3 Dock

Introduction

If you’re the type of person who has only recently joined the throng of people enthused by the latest hardware then you probably don’t recall how ridiculously difficult old systems were to work with. The many different forms of connection option – serial bus, parallel port, ISA slots as well as PCI and AGP – all needed specific drivers and configurations, it was a complete nightmare.

The launch of the Universal Serial Bus in the late 90s went some way to alleviating this problem, allowing manufacturers to work with plug and play operating systems to make the end user experience a lot less headache inducing. The early USB though was nothing if not slow, barely scraping 1.5 Mbit/s in most uses. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that such throughput is far too little to be of value. USB 2.0 greatly enhanced our usage with much higher throughput of 480 Mbit/s and more power able to be sent through the cable too. In fact it was so good that it’s only just being usurped on the majority of our devices with the introduction of USB 3.0 and a tenfold bandwidth increase, but that was quickly superseded by USB 3.1 and the Type C connector which is to be found on any modern smartphone and consoles such as the Nintendo Switch. The old “USB cables go in the third way round” truism of Type A connectors is consigned to history.

What has all this to do with the Elgato Thunderbolt 3?

The proliferation of high bandwidth devices has risen with the speed of our home networking and internet connections allowing HD video to be streamed across the world. It’s Parkinson’s Law brought to life in technical terms, as the bandwidth needed by our devices increases with the bandwidth available. For proof of this you only need to look at old Youtube videos which were recorded and uploaded on the metaphorical potato. With so many devices needing to be connected we need somewhere that would be a one stop solution and the Elgato Thunderbolt 3 Dock does to connectivity what the excellent Stream Deck did for streamers.

Technical Specifications

System Requirements

Mac: macOS Sierra 10.12 or later, Thunderboltâ„¢ 3 port
PC: Windows 10 or later, Thunderboltâ„¢ 3 port

Ports

2x Thunderboltâ„¢ 3 (USB-C) with support for Thunderbolt (40 Gb/s)
Computer Charging (up to 85 W)
Device Power (up to 15 W)
USB 3.1 Gen 2 (up to 10 Gb/s)
DisplayPort (up to 4K)
HDMI 1.4b
1x RJ45 10/100/1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet
3x USB 3.0 (5 Gb/s, 1.5 A, USB Battery Charging 1.2 & UASP)
1x 3.5 mm Headphone Output (amplified analog stereo)
1x 3.5 mm Microphone Input (mono)
1x Power Input (DC 20 V, 8.5 A)

Display Configurations

DisplayPort output: up to 4096 x 2160 pixels
Thunderboltâ„¢ 3 output: up to 5120 x 2880 pixels
Dual displays: up to 4096 x 2160 pixels each
Video output format and frame rate may be limited by host capabilities

Dimensions & Weight

Dimensions: 20 x 8.9 x 2.9 cm / 7.9 x 3.2 x 1.1 in
Weight: 300 g / 10.5 oz

What’s Included

Elgato Thunderboltâ„¢ 3 Dock
50 cm / 1.6 ft Thunderboltâ„¢ 3 Cable
Power Supply