The new dock claims to support up to three 4K monitors or two 8K monitors on Windows, or dual 6K monitors on a MacBook Pro with an M1 Pro chip or better. It also delivers speeds of up to 120Gbps to connected peripherals—assuming your computer has a Thunderbolt 5 port, anyway. Last time we checked, only one $4,500 version of the Razer Blade 18 had this port, though computer world Points out that the $3,899 Maingear ML-17 is also available now.
But even if you don’t have Thunderbolt 5 yet, Kensington’s ports have another trick up their sleeves. It’s one of the very few (perhaps the only?) Thunderbolt docks to offer 140W USB-C PD charging, if you have a laptop that can use that much power.
The 16-inch MacBook Pro won’t hit 140 watts because it only supports MagSafe’s 140 watts, and MagSafe doesn’t transmit data, but it should give you at least 100 watts of power.
Technically, the USB-C PD standard now tops out at 240W, but no company has released a charger close to that level yet, and bases typically top out at 100W. HP and Lenovo’s docking stations can deliver 230W of power from a single cable, but these cables have two ends and are intended for specific workstation laptops, rather than standardized USB-C laptops.
Thunderbolt 5 won’t really get exciting until we can take full advantage of its speeds – as far as I know, no Thunderbolt 5 storage drives have been launched yet. But OWC has just opened pre-orders for the Envoy Ultra, claiming transfer speeds of 6,000MB/sec and a release date of October 2024.
Also, it would help if the price dropped! The new Kensington dock will ship later this month for $400, with the OWC Envoy Ultra priced at $400 for 2TB and $600 for 4TB. It arrived in “late October.”
