Sonnet Echo 11 TB4 and Echo Dual NVMe docks dual-test

Echo 11 Thunderbolt 4 Dock

Modern docking stations look a little different than they did years ago. Firstly, no more proprietary connectors, and for another, they allow you to connect a large number of accessories thanks to the very high-bandwidth Thunderbolt interface. A port in a laptop itself is a good start, but it doesn’t mean “anything” on its own and needs a little help to branch out. And that, in the context of this test, is the task of Sonnet, the docking station specialist.

Basic parameters

Package and accessories

We’ll start with the successor to the dock we tested three years ago. Specifically, it’s the Echo 11 Thunderbolt 4 Dock, with only one digit in the name separating it from its older sibling. Fortunately, the product itself differs in a number of ways. The first is the packaging, which has been given a new colorful graphic.

Compared to the cardboard box with white print, this is not only a visual improvement, but also a more information-rich presentation of the product. The depiction of the dock itself is preserved as well as the detailed view of the port equipment.

The dock is carefully packed in the box so that it will not be damaged in transit. Under the dock you will also find the accessories.

This consists of documentation, a 0.7 m Thunderbolt 4 cable and a 135 W power adapter.

The silver body has been given a darker shade compared to its predecessor and the manufacturer’s logo on the top has also been modernized. The bottom of the dock has four rubber feet to keep it from slipping on the table.

The sides do not contain any ports, but they are interesting for their finning.

But let’s move on to the important part, which is of course the dock’s port selection. In the back we are greeted by six USB ports, three of which are classic “A’s” and three newer “C’s”. The Type-C ports are all 10-gigabit, so even fast external SSD storage won’t suffer from a lack of bandwidth. The USB-C connectors are all Thunderbolt 4-capable and designed to connect additional accessories. It’s then up to you whether that’s a screen, storage, network adapter, or some other dock. We’ll put these options to the test later on. In the back you’ll also find a gigabit Ethernet (RJ-45) port and a power connector.

The front side is a bit more modest in terms of ports: there is an SD memory card reader with UHS-II support, a USB 2.0 connector with fast charging support and an audio jack for connecting headphones with microphone, or speakers. But the most important port on the front is another, the fourth Thunderbolt 4. This one differs from the back three, as it is used to connect to your PC (or iPad Pro) and also supports charging. There’s also a pair of LED indicators and a button to turn off the dock. I don’t know why you would do this though, as this will also turn off charging for all connected devices, but in any case, there’s that too.

The new design of the metal body is best demonstrated by comparing it to its predecessor. The new one has aluminum all around the outer perimeter, while the front and back are matte black plastic. With this, the manufacturer has practically eliminated all the complaints I had about the Echo 11 TB 3, which was conceived in exactly the opposite way. Glossy black plastic along the horizontal perimeter and metal parts on the top and bottom.

The glossy black plastic is not only impractical and prone to fingerprints and dust, but it also scratches very easily, which really doesn’t look nice after three years of use. In addition to the change in design, the dimensions have also changed dramatically. The new dock is considerably smaller, namely 3 cm in length, almost a centimeter in width, but has gained slightly in thickness.

When compared, however, the new dock appears significantly thicker, which is primarily due to the rounded design of its predecessor. As for the changes in the port selection, these are quite substantial. Two 5Gb USB ports in the front have been replaced by just one USB 2.0 port and the Thunderbolt for PC, which we’ve already mentioned. The front Thunderbolt port makes sense if you place the dock under a monitor and the laptop on the side or in front of the monitor. That way the cables don’t have to come out the back and bend forward right away.

At the back, the trio of USB Type-A ports saw an increase in speed from 5 to 10 Gbps and the ethernet was retained. However, the dock lost the HDMI 2.0 video output connector. This is partially replaced by a higher number of Thunderbolt peripheral ports, which has grown from one to three, so you can easily use one to connect a monitor to one and still have two left over (one more than its predecessor).

I must again highlight the new product’s use of matte black plastic instead of glossy black plastic, which was the biggest design flaw of the predecessor. The Echo 11 TB 4 is admittedly full of improvements, but even so, there are fewer USB ports on the front panel and the removal of the HDMI connector again means the necessity of using a USB-C–HDMI cable or adapter, which you’re not likely to find just laying around the house. The biggest advantage of the new product is the trio of Thunderbolt peripheral ports, which enable high flexibility and various options when connecting accessories. The predecessor’s single port was often limiting and I had to power another dock through the Daisy Chain instead of plugging it in directly. We’ll look at this later in our tests as well.

Modern docking stations look a little different than they did years ago. Firstly, no more proprietary connectors, and for another, they allow you to connect a large number of accessories thanks to the very high-bandwidth Thunderbolt interface. A port in a laptop itself is a good start, but it doesn’t mean “anything” on its own and needs a little help to branch out. And that, in the context of this test, is the task of Sonnet, the docking station specialist.

Basic parameters

Package and accessories

The second dock we’ll look at today is the Echo Dual NVMe Thunderbolt Dock. This one offers a completely different use case and is aimed at a different audience than the Echo 11.

The box bears a similar design and again we can see a colorful depiction of the dock as well as its ports and accessories in the package. The protection of the dock in the box is even higher here thanks to the foam padding.

In addition to the dock, the package includes a Thunderbolt cable (this time only half a meter long), a 96W power adapter and the documentation. You also get a ThunderLok 3 connector retainer to securely connect the cable to the dock; we’ll take a closer look at this later.

The design of the Echo Dual is fundamentally different from the Echo 11. In this case, it is a black block with rectangular corners. From the top we see the new logo again, from the bottom a set of four large feet and also a pair of screws.

The sides of the dock in this case are smooth and again without ports.

The Echo Dual has a Thunderbolt 3 port on the back for connecting to a computer and a single 10 Gb USB Type-A port with charging support. In addition, there’s a power connector and also a hole for ThunderLok. The screw underneath the USB-A port is also important.

In the front we find another “A” and a pair of “Cs”, all of which are 10 Gb and support 7.5W charging. The last port is a Thunderbolt port for connecting accessories.

We’ve already mentioned the ThunderLok 3 included in the package. It’s a retainer with a thumbscrew that you slide onto the Thunderbolt cable.

You then connect the cable to the dock and secure it to the dock body with the screw. Because the ThunderLok 3 only secures the cable to the dock, it does not prevent the cable from accidentally being disconnected from the computer. Where the ThunderLok does help, however, is when you move the dock on your desk and the cable could disconnect on its own. This should never happen again when using it.

We’ve already mentioned the pair of screws on the bottom of the dock and the one on the back. When we add four more on the front in each corner, we get all the ones we need to remove to get to the inside of the dock. This is where the main feature of this device is found.

Once unscrewed, you can remove the inside of the dock and you get two parts – the outer shell and the front panel with the motherboard.

The motherboard offers a pair of M.2 slots and the Echo Dual is therefore actually an external storage device. There’s also a fan for SSD cooling, which is actually missing one screw for some unclear reason.

Installing the drives is easy as always, just remove the screws, insert and push the drives in and put the screw back in.

We’ll be using a pair of WD Black SSDs for testing, specifically the SN770 and SN850X models, which we’ll also be doing a review on in the near future. For now, though, they will serve us for testing the dock.

The external dimensions of the Echo Dual are the shortest but the thickest compared to the remaining pair. It is 17 cm long, 8,5 cm wide and almost 4,5 cm tall.

The comparison of port options doesn’t make much sense since the Echo Dual is not a dock designed primarily for expanding port options, but for expanding the storage of a connected device. So take the visual comparison rather illustratively.

What needs to be mentioned though is that each M.2 slot uses only two PCIe 3.0 lanes, so you can forget about full performance (after all, Thunderbolt has a bandwidth of only 40 Gbps). Therefore, the manufacturer states that you can expect transfer speeds of up to 1500 MB/s for a single SSD and 3000 MB/s for a RAID 0 configuration. Meanwhile, the SSDs we used should be able to handle 5000–7000 MB/s. Of course, we will check the performance in practice in the following chapters.

Modern docking stations look a little different than they did years ago. Firstly, no more proprietary connectors, and for another, they allow you to connect a large number of accessories thanks to the very high-bandwidth Thunderbolt interface. A port in a laptop itself is a good start, but it doesn’t mean “anything” on its own and needs a little help to branch out. And that, in the context of this test, is the task of Sonnet, the docking station specialist.

Tests for Windows

We will start our dock tests on a more widespread platform, which is Windows. For our test, we used the MSI GE77 Raider laptop we recently tested.

We first connected the Echo Dual with a pair of WD drives. The Thunderbolt app correctly detected the connected device for us, but the surprise was that on Windows 11 we no longer needed to approve the connection as we used to on Windows 10.

As the drives were brand new, it was necessary to format them first, which was done without difficulty.

In CrystalDiskMark 8.0 we achieved slightly better results than the manufacturer claims, at least in the case of read speeds. Here we crossed the 1600 MB/s threshold, while writing was just below the claimed 1500. Although this is not a test of the drives as such, you can see that the SN850X offers better values in several tests, but wait for the review for a full assessment.

The Echo dual also offers a single Thunderbolt port for accessories, and we tested that too. First, we plugged in the Solo 10G SFP+, which you may already be familiar with from the Asus 10 Gb router test.

The application again correctly detected another Thunderbolt device.

And also the 10 Gb ethernet connection worked without any problems. So this is a significant improvement over the 1/2.5 Gbps that you would normally use on a laptop.

You can also use the front port to connect a monitor. With a 4K 60 Hz monitor, there was also not a single problem.

Let’s move on to the Echo 11. This one also connected on the first try and automatically, without the need for any intervention.

Since its most interesting feature is the ability to connect up to three other devices simultaneously, we focused on this feature. So we connected the monitor, the Solo 10G and the Echo Dual to the Echo 11. So only one cable went to the laptop, but realistically we got nine usable USB ports, 10 Gb ethernet and a 4K display.

Even with all three devices plugged into the Echo 11, I didn’t notice any issues with the display, network, or storage. Everything worked on the first try and reliably.

If we were using a less powerful ultrabook, the Echo 11 could even charge it, and you’d get a complete work setup with one cable.

Modern docking stations look a little different than they did years ago. Firstly, no more proprietary connectors, and for another, they allow you to connect a large number of accessories thanks to the very high-bandwidth Thunderbolt interface. A port in a laptop itself is a good start, but it doesn’t mean “anything” on its own and needs a little help to branch out. And that, in the context of this test, is the task of Sonnet, the docking station specialist.

Tests for macOS

Thunderbolt has historically been associated with Macs probably more than any Windows device, and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to test the docks on the new Apple Silicon models. So I used a MacBook Pro 14 with an M1 Max processor to test it out. The docks support all versions of the M1 and M2 (including the Pro, Max, and Ultra versions) though, as well as older models with Intel processors. In addition, you can also connect the docks to newer iPads Pro with M1 and M2.

MacOS, after connecting the Echo Dual, displayed a notification that I missed on Windows.

In the settings, we can then find out more information about the connected dock as well as the fact that the 15W charging really works.

We formatted the pair of M.2 drives with exFAT and checked their visibility in the settings.

The speed tests showed slightly lower numbers than on Windows, and the differences between the drives are also not visible. The settings confirmed to us that the drives only use two PCIe lanes, which confirms the manufacturer’s claims.

Out of curiosity, I tried removing one disk and running the tests again, but the result was the same. So the dock cannot dynamically provide multiple lanes for a single SSD.

The second dock tested is the Echo 11, which will be a great partner for laptops like the MP 14.

Once it is connected, we need to confirm the connection again.

The settings again show us more information. The interesting thing here is that the dock works in USB4 mode and offers one 40Gb lane for each of the four ports.

Also important to note is that the dock delivers up to 90W for charging and that is why I said that the Echo 11 is a great fit for these types of laptops. When you get to work or home, you just need to plug in one cable to your laptop to charge it and connect your peripherals and monitors. I consider this one of the best features and uses of Thunderbolt.

But let’s move on to the more challenging test. So once again we connect Solo 10G, Echo Dual and monitor to Echo 11 and then to the MacBook.

Viewed from above, it really is a complicated tangle of cables, but aesthetics are not important now.

What is important is that everything works as expected. The monitor, the storage and the 10 Gb ethernet are all correctly detected and work without any problems.

Just to be sure, we broke the Daisy Chain and connected each of the three Sonnet devices to one port on the MacBook.

This way we used all its available ports, but gained 4 Thunderbolts, 8 USB and 10 Gb ethernet. It also has an SD card reader, but that wasn’t the rule with older models.

When connected to the trio of ports, we can see that each device is detected on a separate bus.

The ease of use on both platforms is truly impressive, especially when using the Daisy Chain.

Modern docking stations look a little different than they did years ago. Firstly, no more proprietary connectors, and for another, they allow you to connect a large number of accessories thanks to the very high-bandwidth Thunderbolt interface. A port in a laptop itself is a good start, but it doesn’t mean “anything” on its own and needs a little help to branch out. And that, in the context of this test, is the task of Sonnet, the docking station specialist.

Conclusion

The pair of Sonnet docks did not disappoint in the tests and the manufacturer maintains a high standard, which is why I use its products on a daily basis. The Echo 11 Thunderbolt 4 Dock is a solid successor to the TB3 version. The new product corrected the design flaws of its predecessor and switched to more modern ports, be it the 10Gb USB or a trio of Thunderbolt peripheral ports. Yes, the dock has no HDMI ports, but that’s nothing that an adapter or a new cable won’t solve; the added value of a trio of TB ports versus one outweighs this shortcoming by a landslide. The dock’s smaller size is also a plus and the 90W charging capability is icing on the cake.

The Echo Dual NVMe Thunderbolt dock doesn’t offer as many additional ports as the Echo 11, but on the other hand, it can add up to 16 TB of fast storage thanks to a pair of M.2 slots. The Thunderbolt connection unfortunately limits the speed of the drives to about 1500 MB/s each, but you can save money and not buy expensive PCIe 4.0/5.0 SSDs. In the case of macOS use, the option to use one SSD as a boot drive and the other for Time Machine backups is certainly interesting. Of course the most common will be file storage or use in video production.

Considering that Sonnet is an American company, you may think that availability in our country will be problematic. However, the opposite is true, as both tested products and many more can be found at dtpobchod.cz. Another common problem of Thunderbolt devices is their price, which is exacerbated recently by the global situation, inflation, the exchange rate of the dollar to the euro and so on. Fortunately, there’s a solution to this too, and the manufacturer is currently offering discounts on these products that we tested. The Echo 11 therefore costs 370 EUR and the Echo Dual NVMe got a price of 350 EUR. There’s also a third dock on sale called the Echo 5 Thunderbolt 4 HUB, which although we haven’t tested, is essentially a scaled-down Echo 11 with a trio of TBs and one USB Type-A. It also offers 85W charging and a more affordable price tag at 205 EUR.

Due to the excellent test results, high build quality, reduced price and also long-term experience with the predecessor, I award the Sonnet docks the editorial award “Top Notch“.

• Contents
• Echo 11 Thunderbolt 4 Dock
• Echo 11 Thunderbolt 4 Dock
• Echo 11 Thunderbolt 4 Dock
• Echo 11 Thunderbolt 4 Dock
• Echo 11 Thunderbolt 4 Dock