OWC 12 Port Thunderbolt 2 Dock

Product Information

SD card: For digital photographers, SD cards are still a common way to transfer images to a computer. Thunderbolt 4 hubs and docking stations are slowly taking over from their Thunderbolt 3 counterparts thanks to much better performance and compatibility with many other interfaces. Likewise, the minimum power requirements for Thunderbolt 4 are double those of USB 4 at 15W versus 7. Removing any device besides than the last one will break your chain and render devices unusable until the chain is re-established.

The dock supports dual 4K display each at a 60Hz refresh rate or an 8K display at a 60Hz refresh rate. If you use a laptop as your main computer and regularly move that laptop to and from a desk with multiple peripherals, you can leave all of those accessories plugged into the dock so that when you sit down at your desk, you can simply plug your Thunderbolt cable into the laptop to connect everything instantly. You can get up to 90W charging power back to the laptop (great for PCs with dedicated GPUs that require more power), and there's support for a single 8K display at 30Hz or dual 4K displays at 60Hz. A great Thunderbolt dock extends the functionality of a computer by offering additional connections, each capable of the fastest data-transfer speeds. Its footprint is relatively small next to that of the other docks we tested, which tend to be a bit wider, but unlike the TS3 Plus, it’s not made to stand on its end.Most 13-inch laptops charge at 45 or 60 watts, and even the most power-hungry MacBook Pro models max out at 96 watts, so regardless of which computer you’re using, you’re likely to get full-speed charging or very close to it. In our tests, the Thunderbolt ports were able to support two 4K monitors at 60 Hz when we connected them using USB-C–to–DisplayPort cables.

You can run a single Thunderbolt cable from the computer to the dock and put the dock somewhere more accessible. Similarly, we skipped over Razer’s Thunderbolt 4 Dock Chroma, which has one fewer USB-A port than the OWC Thunderbolt Dock and costs a lot more. But if you have a more power-hungry machine, such as a 15- or 16-inch MacBook Pro, the docking station will charge your computer at a slower rate.

It implements double the minimum requirements for video and data but has the same top speeds and specs.