Sa, 08:10 Rewind son Docking solutions with Thunderbolt for Mac/MacBook and also iPad Pro (with Thunderbolt) are a practical addition for all those who conveniently manage many external devices such as hard drives, monitors and memory cards on a central interface box, and at the same time want to have USB ports within reach to charge their mobile devices. How many and which interfaces are available on such a dock depends on the one hand on the design and target application, but on the other hand it is also technically limited. Compact
Designation Echo 20 SuperDockAvailability “coming soon”Many external components can already be connected (via an upstream) via the current Thunderbolt 4 standard, which, like Thunderbolt 3, offers a maximum bandwidth of 40 Gbit/s and enables compatibility with other standards such as USB, HDMI, LAN and others . In the case of the new Sonnet Echo 20, as the name suggests, there are up to 20 components. In addition, the “SuperDock” enables power supply and charging power with up to 100 W Power Delivery (PD) plus power supply for the internal components and power for external USB components up to 15 W. The total power for this is provided by an external 150 W power supply.Sonnettech Echo 20 Tnhunderbolt 4 “SuperDock”
However, the sheer number of connection options says nothing about their general usefulness for individual users. As rewind tests of this and similar docking solutions have shown in the past, there is always someone who is missing this or that connection option, or who does not like this or that layout or position of the sockets. For example, after testing the Sonnet Echo 11, readers complained that the host connection was positioned at the front, which is quite practical for MacBook users who want to take the cable with them. Or there were complaints that the LAN port only manages 1 GbE, but there are also docks with 2.5 GbE. Others lacked an HDMI port. For the latter, Sonnet now offers a variant of the Echo 11 with HDMI (see TechTicker).
There is no dock that really satisfies EVERYONE equally. The number of possible connection/socket combinations is simply too large and the requirements too different. And of course the price also plays a significant role. The best way to reach “power users” is with solutions that combine as many options as possible under one roof. The new Sonnet Echo 20 is one of the top players here, but I’m pretty sure someone will find a hair in the ointment here too.
Next page: Sonnet Echo 20 Feature Overview
Other pages of the article:
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