User guide
Page 9
Mac Thunderbolt Docks: Belkin Versus the Clones
by Julio Ojeda-Zapata
F
or many of us, I might paraphrase Wallis Simp-
son’s saying as “You can never be too rich, too
thin, or have too many ports.” As such, using a
port-poor Apple portable can be a pain in the poste-
rior.
MacBook Air users have it particularly bad with just
one Thunderbolt port (compared to two on Mac-
Book Pro models) and no HDMI port (there’s one on
the MacBook Pro with Retina Display). No Macintosh
laptop has more than two USB ports. An Ethernet
port? Don’t be a silly.
Thunderbolt docks are a solution to this problem.
They turn one Thunderbolt port into two, and add a
variety of other ports such as USB, Ethernet, and au-
dio. This greatly increases your expansion capability,
with the option to charge and sync iOS devices via
the USB ports, hook up speakers and microphones,
make networking fast and reliable via a physical con-
nection, add storage and external displays, and so
on.
Expansion options do not end there. Thunderbolt
is designed for daisy-chaining up to six devices per
port, making it
possible to string
together multiple
Thunderbolt de-
vices (assuming all
but the last in the
chain also have
dual Thunderbolt
ports). At one
point I went nuts
and daisy-chained
three Thunderbolt docks together. It totally works.
The Thunderbolt docks I tested using a MacBook Air
are attractive and reasonably unobtrusive — and
therefore handy desk units — but I would not char-
acterize any as particularly portable, especially since
you’d also have to lug around a bulky power brick.
I tested a Belkin version that is a bit of a beast but
very elegant and versatile, along with an assortment
of smaller Thunderbolt docks that are essentially the
same as each other. That is because the vendors are
working o one hardware design and adding minor
variations. A number of other dock-like Thunderbolt
devices are available, too. This is all great given how
maddeningly sparse the selection of Thunderbolt
peripherals used to be.
One important note: All the docks I tested are based
on the original Thunderbolt spec, so Thunderbolt 2
devices plugged into the peripherals will perform at
only Thunderbolt 1 speeds.
Belkin Thunderbolt Express Dock – This large, but
elegantly designed, gadget oers a trio of USB 3.0
ports, a FireWire 800 port, a gigabit Ethernet port, a
headphone port, and a microphone port along with
two Thunderbolt ports. At $200, or $100 off its origi-
nal price, it’s a bargain, too.
If you need to attach FireWire 800 storage devices to
a new Mac, this is the dock for you, given that only
the Mac mini and the 13-inch MacBook Pro (without
Retina Display) still include FireWire 800 ports, and
those are likely to disappear soon. The FireWire port
in the Thunderbolt Express Dock worked well for me,
as did all the other ports.
With no HDMI port, my main external-display option
is Mini DisplayPort, which coexists with Thunderbolt
(a Thunderbolt port is also a Mini DisplayPort port,
but not the other way around). I found a DisplayPort
monitor, and used one of its full-size DisplayPort
ports and a DisplayPort-to-Mini DisplayPort cable for
connecting to the dock.
Thunderbolt docks can be used with external dis-
plays, just as if these were connected directly to the
Macs. The Belkin dock, however, lacks one common
means for linking up a display: HDMI. An alternative
technology, DisplayPort, is supported.
DisplayPort connections occur in one of two ways,
via full-size DisplayPort ports (like the ones found on
