Best Thunderbolt docks 2023: Extend your laptop’s capabilities

About the only knock against IOgear’s GTD737 is its use of two DisplayPort 1.2 ports on the rear of the dock, which serve as the only dedicated display outputs. (We suspect HDMI is more popular.)

Otherwise, this dock is excellent, providing almost all the features you’ll want at an affordable price: a 10Gbps USB-A port on the front for 7.5W smartphone charging; on the rear, two 5Gbps USB-A ports for legacy mice and keyboards and two 10Gbps USB-C ports for further expansion. There’s also a gigabit ethernet port and a headphone jack. The 2.3-foot Thunderbolt 3 cable supplies 60W for your laptop via the associated 135W power brick. Performance details can be found in our review.

Note that this dock is essentially identical to the Kensington SD5500T (review), which at press time was priced slightly higher. Double-check our review to make sure.

Belkin’s Thunderbolt 3 Dock Core is a smartly designed “powered” Thunderbolt 3 travel dock, and an inexpensive one as well.

At a nearly square 5.2 x 6.5 x 1.5 inches, the Thunderbolt Dock Core black doesn’t take up much room, and the included 8-inch Thunderbolt 3 cord provides ample length for flexibility. Ports are adequately spaced around the flat, black plastic cube, with HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort 1.4 ports providing a stable 4K/60Hz experience to both of my 4K displays. There’s gigabit ethernet and a 3.5mm audio jack, but good luck telling the USB 3.1 and USB 2.0 Type A ports apart—they’re not labeled.

Plugable’s TBT3-UDZ is simply one of the best Thunderbolt 3 docks we’ve tested, with a boatload of ports. It’s expensive, however.

On the front, the TBT3-UDZ includes a 10Gbps USB-C and a 10Gbps USB-A (USB 3.1) port, microSD and SD card slots, plus a headphone jack. On the rear, five USB-A (USB 3.0 ports) and gigabit ethernet complement a pair of DisplayPort 1.4 ports and HDMI 2.0 ports. (It’s all based on Intel’s Titan Ridge chipset.) A 29-inch 40Gbps Thunderbolt 3 cable connects the dock to your laptop, and is capable of delivering 96W of power. Naturally, this is a powered dock, with a hefty 170W (!) charger.

This squat little Thunderbolt 4 dock feels a lot more solid than its rated 1.68 pounds would indicate, and sprouts ports to all sides: a 10Gbps USB-C port capable of 15W charging on the front, a 5Gbps USB-A port on either side, plus two more on the back, all capable of 7.5W out. The back also houses two DisplayPort 1.4 ports, an HDMI 2.0 port, ethernet, and a USB-C 3.2 Gen 1 port designed for video. We only tested this dock with two 4K/60 external displays, but it’s capable of driving three 4K/60 displays provided you have a DisplayPort 1.4-capable laptop with Display Stream Compression, or DSC.

The 4J0A2AA supplies up to 100W to the host laptop via the Thunderbolt cable—still among the highest we’ve seen. Even then, there were no thermal issues at all.

The Mac world tends to emphasize Thunderbolt-connected displays far more than the Windows world does, so this might be a niche product for most of you. But this thing is tiny (4.75 x 2.88 x 0.5 inches) even if, unfortunately, the associated power brick isn’t. It will send 15W of power via the Thunderbolt/USB-C connections to charge smartphones, and 60W to the host PC.

We lack Thunderbolt-connected displays among our test bed, so we can’t fully test this. But the box does include a USB-C to HDMI adapter, so you can certainly connect one display natively out of the box, then attach a USB-C hub to connect another.

The Apex Thunderbolt 4 Dock features one 40Gbps upstream TB4 port (that connects to the computer with the included Thunderbolt 4 cable) and one 40Gbps downstream TB4 port for other devices, such as a fast SSD storage drive. The upstream Thunderbolt port can supply up to 90W of power to your laptop, while the downstream port can charge other devices at 15W.

Anker’s inclusion of two HDMI ports means you don’t need any adapters to connect displays, provided you own two with HDMI connections. In total, the dock supports the two Thunderbolt 4 ports, two USB-A ports (10Gbps, 4.5W of power), another two USB-A ports (480Mbps, 4.5W), and a USB-C port (10Gbps, 20W) alongside gigabit ethernet, a UHS-II SD card reader, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The dock is powered, with a 120W power supply.

CalDigit’s Thunderbolt Station 3 Plus is one of the most popular Thunderbolt 3 docks available, and it’s easy to see why: a space-saving vertical orientation, 87W charging, gobs of available ports, and even niceties like a S/PDIF optical connection and an external Thunderbolt jack for daisy-chaining devices.

Port selection includes: two Thunderbolt 3 ports (one from the laptop, and one for an external connection), and a single DisplayPort 1.2 port. That’s ideal for a single 4K display, but awkward for two. The TS3 Plus includes one full-sized SD (SD 4.0 UHS-II) card reader, the S/PDIF port, gigabit ethernet, and two 3.5mm audio jacks—one in, one out. Five USB Type A ports are also included (all 5Gbps USB 3.1 Gen 1) and two USB-C ports (one 5Gbps port, and one 10Gbps port).

The short answer: Look at the laptop’s published specifications to be sure. A Thunderbolt port may look indistinguishable from a USB-C port, since they both use the same physical USB-C connection. Put another way, all Thunderbolt ports are USB-C, but not all USB-C ports are Thunderbolt-equipped.

Thunderbolt ports are supposed to have a small lightning-bolt icon to identify them. But some laptop makers use a similar lightning-bolt icon to indicate that a USB-C port can be used for charging your phone, and not for Thunderbolt. Laptop makers sometimes don’t want to clutter the clean lines of their products by adding additional logos, it seems. 

Adding to the confusion, you may also see USB-C hubs marketed as “Thunderbolt compatible.” That’s true. You can plug a Thunderbolt dock into a non-Thunderbolt, generic USB-C port. But it will be limited by the available bandwidth that the port provides, so it’s somewhat deceptive in that regard. 

A USB-C dongle won’t replace a Thunderbolt dock, as there’s circuitry within the dock that allows it to work your laptop’s high-speed Thunderbolt port. However, there’s nothing saying that you can’t connect the dongle to an available USB-C port on the Thunderbolt dock itself to add even more ports.

That solution will add more clutter to your desk, but it might allow you to buy a cheaper, budget dock, too. It’s up to you!

Most USB-C ports are built on the second-generation USB 3.1 data-transfer standard, which transfers data at 10Gbps. Thunderbolt 3 and 4 ports, the most common standard, transfer data at up to 40Gbps. Thunderbolt 4 differs very slightly in that it supports a theoretical maximum of 32Gbps for external storage devices, but you probably won’t notice the difference.

There are very rare exceptions: A new USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 spec can pair two 10Gbps channels together, creating an aggregate 20Gbps hub. And while the vast majority of Thunderbolt 3-equipped laptops are designed with four PCIe lanes for a total of 40Gbps, some laptops only ship with two PCIe lanes for a total of 20Gbps. (A Dell support page, for example, details its four-lane and two-lane laptops.) Essentially, a 20Gbps connection should be enough for a single 4K monitor running at 60Hz, with a bit of extra bandwidth for other data transfers among connected peripherals.

The short answer: Not that much, and we consider Thunderbolt 3 docks and Thunderbolt 4 docks to be functionally equivalent for most users. The longer answer, which we’ll describe below, is that there are differences, and parsing the nuances can be confusing. Think of Thunderbolt 4 as the more restrictive version of Thunderbolt 3, with little room for any gotchas.

Essentially, Thunderbolt 3 and Thunderbolt 4 allow up to 40Gbps maximum bandwidth, enough for two 4K/60 displays. “Up to” is the key phrase: Thunderbolt 3 is only required to support a 10Gbps connection, allowing for a single external 4K display (a 16Gbps PCIe connection, paired with USB 3.2). Most manufacturers go beyond this, however, and our recommended docks support the full specification (and two 4K displays) unless noted. Thunderbolt 3 also supports a slower (16Gbps) PCIe connection for connecting to external storage.

Thunderbolt 3 is also the only specification (not Thunderbolt 4) that we’ve seen connecting to external GPUs, in case you’d like to try that approach.

Thunderbolt 4 doesn’t allow for any leeway—you’re getting a full-fledged 40Gbps connection (32Gbps PCIe + USB 3.2), no questions asked. For external storage, Thunderbolt 4 supports 32Gbps of data transfer—this really only matters for video, external GPU connections, or possibly games. Thunderbolt 4 supports “wake on sleep” from an external keyboard or mouse, which allows you to tap your external keyboard or wiggle your mouse to wake up your PC, which is handy. Thunderbolt 4 allows for longer cables and more Thunderbolt ports on laptops, too.

USB4 is essentially a subset of Thunderbolt 4, mainly designed as an an I/O specification. USB4 can only support one display, and manufacturers can choose whether it supports a 20Gbps connection or a 40Gbps connection, according to Thunderbolt dock designer Plugable. As a subset of Thunderbolt 4, a USB4 device will run just fine plugged into a Thunderbolt 4 port. But a Thunderbolt 4 device may not work as expected when plugged into what is specifically a USB4 port. Don’t worry about this too much, as it’s rare to see a USB4 hub. Instead, most hubs and docks are marketed as Thunderbolt 4, while most devices (like an external SSD) are designed around USB4.

USB4 Version 2 is an upcoming standard that will propel USB4 to 80Gbps, which is the only 80Gbps standard yet announced. The first products will debut (as a guess) in early 2023.

Note that Thunderbolt 3 and 4 require at least 15W to power devices plugged into the Thunderbolt port, such as a bus-powered hard drive. USB4 requires just half that.

Device maker Anker has a nice summary of all of the technical features associated with Thunderbolt 3, Thunderbolt 4, and USB4, if you really want to get into the fine distinctions (below).

A DisplayLink USB-C docking station is a new category of docking station. They’re often marketed just as a USB-C docking station, unfortunately, though the DisplayLink logo features prominently on the box. The key here is that the DisplayLink technology (now owned by Synaptics) uses software data compression between your PC and the dock to approximate a Thunderbolt experience (a pair of 4K displays at 60Hz, plus additional peripherals) across the narrower, slower USB-C bus. You’ll need to install a software driver to make it work.

The advantage here is twofold. First, DisplayLink allows you to “cheat” and get a Thunderbolt dock experience on an older laptop. Alternatively, even if you do own a laptop with a Thunderbolt port, you may be able to find a DisplayLink USB-C dock for a cheaper price than Thunderbolt. This is a viable solution, especially if you don’t mind playing PC games.

Our separate story on DisplayLink docks has more.

We’re starting to see some USB-C docking stations take advantage of another technology: HBR3 (High Bit Rate 3) with DSC (Display Stream Compression). Think of it as the industry-standard, manufacturer-agnostic version of DisplayLink. It works over the USB-C port, and again provides a dual 4K60 display experience.

The problem? It’s wonky. We’ve found that support for the technology was very iffy in 11th-gen hardware, and really seems to work consistently in 12th-gen or 13th-gen Core laptops (and above, when they ship). While we can’t really recommend it right now, we’re keeping an eye on it.