“Not a full year after the Thunderbolt Dock saw the light of day, Elgato released its second iteration of this device with Tunderbolt 2 technology inside,” IT Enquirer writes. “The Thunderbolt 2 Dock looks almost identical — it’s a bit bigger than the first Elgato Dock — but has Thunderbolt 2 ports, better USB 3 performance and a better quality sound output DAC. The new Tunderbolt 2 Dock can drive a 4K display via HDMI.”
“In short, the Thunderbolt 2 Dock really is all [t]hat you could hope for in a Thunderbolt Dock. If you hesitated buying the first Thunderbolt Dock, then now might be the time to go out and buy the Elgato dock,” IT Enquirer writes. “For €229.95 [US$229.95] you’ll get three (more) USB 3 ports, a 4K HDMI port, a nice sounding audio port, a Gigabit Ethernet port, two Thunderbolt 2 ports for daisy-chaining and the ability to charge your iPad if you download the Elgato Dock utility that provides your USB 3 ports with the necessary electrical power.”
Much more in the full review here.
What’s the problem with having like 4 or 6 thunderbolt ports? That’s really what people need… If they wanted a USB dock they would get one!
I don’t think Thunderbolt supports that topology. It’s a daisy-chain system, like SCSI was.
Of course it is
A small portable inexpensive Thunderbolt to USB 3 adapter would have been useful, (and would sell more than manufactures realize) but sadly I don’t think anyone will get around to making one.
My first generation Belkin Thunderbolt dock has a Firewire 800 port. I was disappointed when Belkin dropped the FW from their second generation dock and disappointed that Elgato doesn’t include a FW port. I know FW is going the way of SCSI but a lot of us still use FW drives.
OWC has a nice Thunderbolt 2 dock just recently released. It has (2) Thunderbolt 2 ports, has (5) USB 3.0 ports, a Firewire 800 port, audio in/out, (1) 4K HDMI, 1 Ethernet.
You can chain Thunderbolt so you don’t need all the ports on the hub, and don’t forget, USB 3 is backwards compatible for the many devices,
and also….USB 3.0 is as fast as Thunderbolt when using single drives up to 6.0TB (non RAID or SSDs)
Good point about the speeds of USB… and let’s be honest. USB3 is as fast as Thunderbolt for 99% of people’s needs.