Belkin Thunderbolt 4 Dock Pro: 30-second review
Belkin makes PC and Mac-orientated hardware with equal enthusiasm, and the Belkin Thunderbolt 4 Dock Pro can be used with both PC hardware and Apple MacBooks that have TB 3 or 4 ports.
Engineered to high standards, the dock is made from a cool-to-the-touch aluminium tube that’s capped by black plastic ends, front and rear.
Designed to sit on the edge of the desk, the front features a USB-C port, Thunderbolt connection to the computer, a 3.5mm audio jack, a full-sized SD card reader, and a power button.
The rear has dual HDMI, a single Thunderbolt downstream power, an Ethernet LAN port, and four Type-A USB ports, two of those being USB 2.0.
If that seems a little underwhelming for a dock that Belkin is asking $349 in the USA, but imagine how UK customers feel confronted by a £399 bill for this feature set.
Included in the box is a 120W Moso-branded PSU, a 50cm Thunderbolt cable and a regionally appropriate power cable. The wattage of the PSU hints that this dock can’t hit the 96W that many are now offering, maxing out at 90W.
That’s plenty for charging most laptops, but some gaming and workstation models expect more than this wattage.
Because this uses the latest Intel Thunderbolt chipsets, it will work with TB3, TB4, USB4.0 and even USB-C. But it’s worth noting that with USB-C, the amount of bandwidth available to be shared amongst the ports is much less than under the first three choices. It will work with iPads that have a USB-C port and not Lightening.
Our assessment of the port selection is that it could have been better in a few places. The LAN port is only gigabit, not 2.5GbE and having a single downstream Thunderbolt port is a significant restriction.
These limitations would be acceptable if the Belkin Thunderbolt 4 Dock Pro were cheaper, but it is one of the most expensive options available.
Belkin Thunderbolt 4 Dock Pro: Price and availability
- How much does it cost? $350/£400/€400
- When is it out? It is starting to be available now
- Where can you get it? Direct from Belkin or through online retailers like Amazon.
When researching this product, we started at the Belkin website, where an unpleasant shock greeted us regarding the price Belkin had attached to it.
Direct from the manufacturer, it costs $349.99 in the USA, a whopping £399 in the UK, and €399 in Europe.
That makes it one of the most expensive available, more costly than the Plugable Thunderbolt 4 Docking Station, StarTech Thunderbolt 3/USB Dock, and only exceeded by Caldigit TS4 on price. But, the Caldigit TS4 product offers 18 ports, not 12.
Things get slightly twisted because the same product can be found online for much less than Belkin asks. In the UK, from Amazon.co.uk, this dock only costs £261, and from Amazon.com in the USA, it is $278, and from Newegg it is only $265.
Considering the features, these seem more realistic prices for this product, but it’s hardly a bargain even with these discounts.
- Value: 3 / 5
Belkin Thunderbolt 4 Dock Pro: Specs
Belkin Thunderbolt 4 Dock Pro: Design
- Elegant design
- Simple layout
- No security slot
Belkin always makes a big effort to make its products look different, and the Belkin Thunderbolt 4 Dock Pro is no exception.
Where it doesn’t make a huge effort to hide that this is a metal tube capped by plastic endplates, the way the corners are angled back gives this dock some distinctive lines.
Our only reservation about the aesthetics is that Belkin loves high gloss black plastic that attracts dust once the protective film is removed, as this action imparts the surface with a static charge invariably.
Port placement is predictable, with those ports that are likely to be changed on the front and those that will often be left connected on the rear. Due to the thickness of the dock, neither face is over-subscribed, and some other ports would have had space if Belkin had chosen to include them.
One missing item that might cause this dock to be rejected for some corporate use is the lack of a security slot. Therefore, it isn’t possible to easily secure this dock, enabling anyone who is light-fingered to remove it unhindered.
As pretty as this hardware is, the reality is that docks are bought for a purpose, and in this context, that’s about how much you can connect and the potential caveats of doing that.
- Design: 4 / 5
Belkin Thunderbolt 4 Dock Pro: Features
- 12 ports
- Mac display issues
- 90W not enough
The headline feature of this dock is that it offers 12 ports, enabling plenty of peripherals to be hung from it.
But, from the outset, the Belkin Thunderbolt 4 Dock Pro is slightly stymied by the choice of those twelve connections and how that funnels the use case in a particular direction.
The first red flag is that there is only one Thunderbolt downstream port, making this dock unsuitable for those who use both a Thunderbolt-connected display and external storage.
It may have been a poor decision to offer two HDMI ports as these ports grab a large chunk of bandwidth from Thunderbolt. This design has other problems that we’ll cover shortly, but converting one into another TB downstream port would have made this dock much more flexible. And, with a TB to HDMI adapter, the number of displays supported would have remained unchanged.
As with all USB-C and Thunderbolt docks, there is a compromise made over bandwidth (40Gbps over TB 4 and 3) and how that gets divided between the ports available. All docks are typically oversubscribed, meaning you can’t use the full potential of all ports. Having two low-bandwidth USB 2.0 ports and only a Gigabit Ethernet port mitigates the sharing to a degree, but it doesn’t fix the whole problem.
Where things start to get away from ideal is on the display configuration, mostly because of poor choices Apple made with its early M1 MacBook designs.
Under Thunderbolt 3 or 4 on a Windows PC, it is possible to use both HDMI ports and the downstream TB port to connect three monitors. Note we said ‘possible’, not ‘practical’.
Some Apple MacBooks can drive two displays, with only one being a HDMI port and the other being the TB downstream line. The iPad Pro USB-C, iPad Mini USB-C and iPad Air USB-C are all restricted to a single HDMI port for output.
The Mac display issues are all Apple’s mess, but it must have been extra disappointing for Belkin, a big supporter of this brand, to discover that you need a Windows PC to get the full potential of its dock.
Again, having one HDMI and dual TB downstream might have addressed some of these issues, but not all.
But had they made that choice, another issue might have occurred since the PSU that drives the dock is only rated to 120W. With 90W promised for charging a Thunderbolt-connected system and 15W to the downstream TB, there isn’t much power left to share with the other ports. The USB-C port supposedly can charge at 18W, which strongly hints that not everything can get its allotted power at the same time.
Most Thunderbolt docks are now delivering 96W certified and even 100W, so the 90W of this dock is a little shy of the competition. More power-demanding machines may find that even when connected to the dock, the battery charge declines when used.
- Features: 4 / 5
Belkin Thunderbolt 4 Dock Pro: Verdict
Whatever you do, don’t buy this gear from Belkin directly, as it is massively overpriced.
While it can be found much cheaper elsewhere, even when discounted, it’s near the price of the superior Plugable Thunderbolt 4 and USB4 Dock. And that design has more charging power, more ports and a 2.5GbE LAN port.
Overall, the Belkin Thunderbolt 4 Dock Pro is stylish, but the port choice doesn’t match the good looks, and the price is way too high for most customers.
Belkin Thunderbolt 4 Dock Pro: Report card
Should you buy a Belkin Thunderbolt 4 Dock Pro?
