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.
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“.
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- 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
