The best Thunderbolt docks for your laptop

With Thunderbolt ports becoming more common in laptops, a Thunderbolt dock can be a critical accessory. Think of the Thunderbolt dock as a more powerful, high-speed alternative to a USB-C hub, adding I/O expansion to your laptop in the form of extra ports for mice, keyboards, external drives, SD cards, and, most importantly, displays. It can even charge your laptop and smartphone!

Simply put, laptops are slimming down. Though cheaper laptops still include microUSB ports, HDMI, SD card slots, and more, premium laptops are opting for the “clean” look, and are pushing all of these legacy ports onto external devices.

The difference? Price and bandwidth. USB-C hubs or dongles are far cheaper, but they offer far less bandwidth. That primarily matters where displays are concerned, but can affect the number and type of external hard drives, SSDs, and other peripherals that can your PC can connect to. While a USB-C hub can support a single 4K display, often at an eye-wearying 30Hz refresh rate, Thunderbolt docks can support up to two 4K displays at a comfortable 60Hz. You can also use Thunderbolt to enable an external GPU for your PC. (There’s nothing stopping you from using a USB-C hub with a Thunderbolt dock, either.)

If your laptop includes a Thunderbolt port, chances are it supports the Thunderbolt 3 or Thunderbolt 4 standard, both of which provide 40Gbps. Intel helped launch the updated Thunderbolt 4 specification in July 2020 as part of its 11th-gen “Tiger Lake” Core laptops, and the specification has become more popular on productivity laptops. The bandwidth behind Thunderbolt 4 is enough to drive those displays and shuttle data back and forth between peripherals without causing your display to flicker or your video stream to stutter.

What’s the difference between Thunderbolt 3, Thunderbolt 4, and USB4? The simple answer is that they’re all similar. The longer answer, explaining the differences, may be found within our Thunderbolt buying guide below our recommendations. If you want to learn more about the benefits of a Thunderbolt dock, what to look for when buying one, or how to know whether your laptop will support one, look here as well.

We define a Thunderbolt dock as one that supplies the ports you need for legacy devices, like USB-A and HDMI. We define a Thunderbolt hub as Thunderbolt in, Thunderbolt-out. The latter is useful if you’re among the small number of those who own dedicated Thunderbolt displays. (If you don’t have one, that’s fine — just buy a Thunderbolt dock instead.)

The best budget Thunderbolt docks

We’ve updated our picks for May 2022 and reorganized them into a single section. We lead off with our picks for best budget docks, which usually boast a compact form factor and just two display outputs. They’re usually bus-powered, meaning they’ll require an external charger for power and to power any connected phones.

Most of the “full-featured” Thunderbolt docks were originally designed for content creators, specifically the Mac market. In this class, powered docks are the norm, shipping with the sort of sizeable power bricks normally associated with gaming laptops. Unlike our budget options, these docks are truly desk-bound.  Expect the 40Gbps bandwidth common to all Thunderbolt 3 docks to be shared among a surfeit of ports, including multiple USB-A ports, a USB-C port or two, SD card slots, and more. Audio jacks are common, and you may even find an external Thunderbolt 3 port as well for daisy-chaining additional devices. All of those ports take up space, so a model that can be positioned on its edge or vertically is better. for cramped work surfaces.

Thunderbolt dock buyer’s guide

If you’re on the fence about whether a Thunderbolt dock is right for you, knowing the answers to the following questions could help you.

How do I know if my laptop has Thunderbolt?

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. 

How fast is Thunderbolt?

Most USB-C ports are built on the second-generation USB 3.1 data-transfer standard, which transfers data at 10Gbps. Most Thunderbolt 3 ports, the most common standard, transfer data at up to 40Gbps. Thunderbolt 4 differs slightly in that it supports a theoretical maximum of 32Gbps where data transfers are concerned, specifically for external storage devices.

There are somewhat rare exceptions: A new USB 3.2 Gen 2X2 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.

What’s the difference between Thunderbolt 3, Thunderbolt 4, and USB4?

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 16 Gbps PCIe connection, paired with USB3.2). 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. Unless you’re editing video or using an external GPU, this probably won’t matter.

Thunderbolt 4 doesn’t allow for any leeway — you’re getting a full-fledged 40Gbps connection (32 Gbps PCIe + USB 3.2), no questions asked. For external storage, Thunderbolt 4 supports 32 Gbps of data transfer — again, 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 your PC up, 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.

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.

Virtually every Thunderbolt device will ship with its own cable. We’d recommend that you use Thunderbolt 3 cables with Thunderbolt 3 products, and Thunderbolt 4 cables with Thunderbolt 4 products.

What to look for in a Thunderbolt dock

Ports, cables, peripherals: Those are the three major considerations when buying a Thunderbolt dock. 

We’re beginning to see the Thunderbolt dock market break down into a few different ways. First, there’s the budget versus full-featured docks we’ve highlighted above. But you also may see something similar to the old USB hubs of old, too: Devices that take Thunderbolt in and then provide several USB-C (including Thunderbolt) ports out. There are a small number of displays with Thunderbolt inputs, which can be plugged directly into these hubs. Do you have an existing cheap USB-C dongle? You can certainly plug that in into a Thunderbolt dock and add even more I/O functionality.

Basically, consider what you’ll want to plug into the dock as a guide for buying one. We prefer devices with ports built in (such as HDMI, USB-A, and so on) as the USB-C device ecosystem is still in its infancy. But ask yourself some questions. Do you want a basic Thunderbolt dock, with just a pair of HDMI ports for connecting two displays? Does an SD card slot matter? How many USB Type A peripherals do you plan to attach? Do you want to use the Thunderbolt cable to charge your laptop, too?

Cables can be an unexpectedly important consideration, too. Virtually every dock ships with a Thunderbolt cable. But consider the displays you own (typically HDMI or DisplayPort) and consider whether the dock will accommodate them.

Check your laptop’s power supply. Does it plug into your laptop via USB-C? If so, a Thunderbolt dock will likely power it. You’ll need to understand how the dock supplies power, though. Check your laptop’s charger to learn how much power it supplies, and how much the dock will need to supply to replace it. If your laptop or devices aren’t receiving enough power, you may see a warning pop up.

A “bus-powered” dock won’t come with an external charger in the package, saving some cost, space, and power concerns. A dock with “power delivery” will supply its own power and charge your laptop and/or a phone via your laptop’s existing USB-C charger. (Chances are that it won’t offer the quick-charging capabilities premium smartphones offer, though.) The more power your dock supplies, the greater the ability to charge your laptop and any bus-powered devices. This is a gotcha most people don’t think about, so if you plan to connect several bus-powered hard drives or SSDs, buy a dock with a hefty power supply. (USB keys, on the other hand, require tiny amounts of power. Don’t worry about these.)

There’s one more consideration: the length of the Thunderbolt cable between your laptop and the dock itself. You may have noticed or heard about USB-C ports wearing out on smartphones; a loose or wobbly connector on Thunderbolt docks can cause monitors to unexpectedly flicker or lose connection. Consider how much tension will be put on a cable. A Thunderbolt dock that’s dangling from a Thunderbolt port will stress the physical connector. You don’t want that!

If you’re a Mac user who has stumbled across this article, welcome. But please be aware that early Apple MacBook Pros powered by Intel silicon supported up to two 4K displays. The first MacBook Pros powered by the Apple M1 chip only support a single 4K display. Many Mac users have recently left negative reviews on Thunderbolt docks on shopping sites because of this. Buy a PC!

How we tested

We’re working from the premise that you’re buying a Thunderbolt dock for its unique ability to connect to two 4K monitors at 60Hz. Lower resolutions should be much easier to run successfully. Our first test simply connected each dock to a pair of 4K/60Hz displays, each of which could accept DisplayPort and HDMI cabling, and made sure there were no visual artifacts at 60Hz resolution.

Second, we checked to see whether the available ports delivered the bandwidth we’d expect, connecting them to an external SSD and transferring a collection of test files over the Thunderbolt cable and port. We also used AJA’s System Test tool to double-check our numbers and test whether read and write speeds were consistent. 

Finally, we spot-checked the available power draw of the hubs and ports with a USB power meter, as well as simply connecting them to bus-powered devices to see if they could deliver enough power to allow them to operate. Here, we discovered that one of our testing laptops didn’t supply enough power running on battery to power a bus-powered Thunderbolt dock, so we enlisted a second, different laptop as a backup.

This story was updated on May 11 with new information and product recommendations. Some of our recommendations are based on Thunderbolt dock reviews produced by our sister site, TechAdvisor.co.uk, and authored by Simon Jary.