Although not scheduled to be released until September 2012 at the earliest, Belkin, Sunix and Matrox realise the importance of a Thunderbolt Docking Station.
That is why they are currently showcasing the Belkin Thunderbolt Express Dock, Sunix Pili and Matrox DS-1 Docking Station, highlighting the benefits their new products can deliver.
The Thunderbolt Docking Station fulfils a role due to the design of the new generation of Ultrabooks, including the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro with Retina Display.
With more sleek and slim, lightweight designs, vendors are finding it difficult to include all the peripherals and ports we have become accustomed to.
Apple started this trend recognising that by utilising Thunderbolt technology they could attach up to six peripherals while utilising just one Thunderbolt Port.
They have their own Thunderbolt Docking station built into the 27” Thunderbolt Monitor, but it has no USB 3 ports. There is however a built in FaceTime HD Camera and Thunderbolt cable.
By connecting one Thunderbolt cable to a Thunderbolt Docking station you then have access to all the ports it has available. Not only does this deal with compatibility issues, (so you don’t require lots of different adapters), it cuts down on cables also. Plus all these products are compatible with Macs or PCs too.
All the Thunderbolt Docking Stations have Gigabit Ethernet ports.
The Belkin Thunderbolt Express Dock and Sunix Pili do have a big advantage over the Matrox DS-1, in that they have two Thunderbolt ports.
This enables them to be part of a Thunderbolt daisy chain. You could connect to the Thunderbolt docking station, then daisy chain onto other Thunderbolt peripherals like a Thunderbolt external hard drive. The Apple Thunderbolt Display has a built-in Thunderbolt cable, so although it only has one port it can still daisy chain up to six devices.
With an integrated hot-swap 3.5 inch SATA HDD enclosure, the Sunix Pili offers you a potential 4TB of storage. There is a slim Blu-ray writer, Multi-card reader (SD, MMC, MS & xD) and four USB 3.0 ports.
The Belkin Thunderbolt Express Dock has three USB 3.0 ports and the Matrox DS-1 has only one but a further two USB 2.0 ports.
These inclusions do come at an additional cost though, so it depends on what your requirements are?
Below is a list of all four Thunderbolt Docking Station specifications to compare:
Belkin Thunderbolt Express
| Belkin Thunderbolt Express Dock Specifications | |
| Ports | 2x Thunderbolt (daisy-chaining supported)
3x USB 3.0 1x FireWire 800 1x eSATA 1x Gigabit Ethernet 3.5mm audio in and out |
Sunix Pili
| Sunix Pili Docking Station Specifications | |
| Ports | 2x Thunderbolt (daisy-chaining supported)
4x USB 3.0 1x Gigabit Ethernet 1x Multi-Card Reader 1x SPDIF digital audio interface |
Matrox DS-1
| Matrox DS-1 Docking Station Specifications | |
| Ports | 1x Thunderbolt (daisy-chaining not supported)
1x USB 3.0 2x USB 2.0 1x Gigabit Ethernet 1x DVI (output) 3.5mm audio in and out |
Thunderbolt Display (Docking Station)
| Thunderbolt Display Docking Station Specifications | |
| Ports | 1x Thunderbolt (daisy-chaining supported)
3x USB 2.0 1x Gigabit Ethernet 1x FireWire 800 1x MagSafe connector |
You forgot to mention that the Belkin has HDMI out. So I believe you can actually have two displays attached to the Belkin (one mini display port and one HDMI). Or, since TB supports daisy chaining, you can get the Apple TB display which supports diasy chaining and then add a third monitor. In theory, of course :-).
Hmm I just realized in Belkin’s latest rev, they took out the HDMI :-(.
Might not be a good move in my opinion