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Video: Testing OWC's Thunderbolt 4 Dock With Built-In Power Supply
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Call me a cynic but to me it seems that's because most of us could survive with a base model if we didn't have to spend more to get the ports. I wondered what Steve Jobs would have said when his birthday went by this week. We rarely get the products that could be made because manufacturers always compromise to make money.
Fair point, mine here doesn't have a thunderbolt output but the HDMI out does 4k60Hz just fine.
Your original post said you wanted to plug a Thunderbolt Studio Display into the dock. You can certainly do that.
Now you’ve moved the goalposts and said you need to plug in two Studio Displays. I don’t know if there is enough bandwidth to run two 5K displays over one Thunderbolt 4 port in the m1 Mac.
I have a Thunderbolt 4 dock OEM’ed for OWC, and I have a 27” Thunderbolt Studio Display (5K) and a 27” Thunderbolt LED display (1440p back from 2011) plugged in to the same Thunderbolt 4 dock, and they work great side by side. I also run Gigabit Ethernet from the back of the Thunderbolt LED display, and I have a Blu USB Mic plugged in to the same dock, which is used for both input and output sound (headphones are connected to the Blu Mic’s analog headphone jack). Additionally, I use the camera built-in to the Thunderbolt Studio Display.
All of these devices run over a single Thunderbolt 4 cable connecting the OWC Thunderbolt 4 dock to a single Thunderbolt 4 port on the 2021 14” M1 Pro MacBook Pro. Additionally, the MacBook Pro is also charged from the Thunderbolt 4 dock over the same Thunderbolt 4 cable.
When I am on video conference calls, all these devices and features operate concurrently over a single Thunderbolt 4 cable. Everything works great together while connected to the OWC Thunderbolt 4 dock (not the one promoted by this article, but the one with an external power brick).
I hope this post has enough detail for your liking.
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Meh. I was using a 2nd hand $100 Targus Thunderbolt 2 dock with my 14" MBP and had all the connectivity needed. For a desktop setup, the integrated power supply is unimportant, and frankly in some ways a negative.
If you're plunking the dock down on your desk, an integrated power supply just makes it bigger than needed. I want a sleek small dock if it's going to live on my desk.
For travel, this is great but also completely overkill when you can spend $20 on a dongle that has all the ports you need. As a modern MBP user the only port I find myself wanting once in a while is USB A.
Now I'm using a Dell U2723QE display that has a dock built into it. Gig ethernet etc. etc. all in the display body, so no more dock on my desk at all and a single USB C cable to the MBP.
The only downside, and the thing that should be checked with any USB C dock is volume control if you connect to external speakers.
The Dell has audio pass through, but it is not configured to work with the Mac's volume control and the display itself has no volume control. So you're left to adjusting volume on your speakers directly which is really inconvenient. So I've resorted to plugging the speakers into the headphone jack (thanks Apple) on the MBP leaving me with a 2 cable hookup.
If you're plunking the dock down on your desk, an integrated power supply just makes it bigger than needed. I want a sleek small dock if it's going to live on my desk.
For travel, this is great but also completely overkill when you can spend $20 on a dongle that has all the ports you need. As a modern MBP user the only port I find myself wanting once in a while is USB A.
Now I'm using a Dell U2723QE display that has a dock built into it. Gig ethernet etc. etc. all in the display body, so no more dock on my desk at all and a single USB C cable to the MBP.
The only downside, and the thing that should be checked with any USB C dock is volume control if you connect to external speakers.
The Dell has audio pass through, but it is not configured to work with the Mac's volume control and the display itself has no volume control. So you're left to adjusting volume on your speakers directly which is really inconvenient. So I've resorted to plugging the speakers into the headphone jack (thanks Apple) on the MBP leaving me with a 2 cable hookup.
Do you not use your laptop in clamshell?
They are super useful to me. I have my desk setup with my m1 air with single cord to connect everything (monitor, mouse, external drives, speakers, power). When I'm working from home (day or two per week), I can connect my work-issued Dell laptop via the same thunderbolt cable, and it connects to everything just the same.
Having several ports would be nice, I guess, but I like being able to connect one cable and go.
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And it was bulky and heavy? Removing the ports made the MacBooks so much lighter and portable.
Adding some of the ports was a huge mistake. It’s just too bulky IMO. Say what you will but Ives was right about removing some of the ports: laptop should be portable. I don’t mind the dongles, I have USB-C/lightning to whatever the ports needed for other end.
Well, this is true, but -- and I'm not sure if you're just joking or not -- but I often use my 14" MBP as a desktop, connected to two external displays, ethernet, an external drive, external keyboard, a mouse and power. I certainly don't want to have to plug all that individually into my laptop every time I go back to my desk.
A dock lets me do it all with a single cable.
I have a Caldigit TS4 into which two Studio Displays are connected, attached to my 14" MBP with a single TB4 cable. Works fine.
The OWC Thunderbolt 4 dock also works with two Studio Displays.
From the specs page:
- (1) 3.5mm Stereo Audio Output Port
As with many of the newer Thunderbolt 4 Hubs in the market, including my Satechi Thunderbolt 4 Hub, the front USB 2.0 Port is intended to be used as charging port, not data transfer port. That's why you see a changing symbol next to it:
90w is not suitable for all of Apple's MacBooks...
When will these dock manufacturers learn that they should be providing the same amount of wattage that the power adapter included with the device provides.
My original 16" had a deteriorated battery only after a year of use because of OWC's thunderbolt 3 dock providing 85w of power when the computer expected 96w during full gpu / cpu use. It would actively drain the battery while in use, causing an early failure.
The M2 16" MBP comes with a 140w power adapter. Any dock currently being made that is "professional" in nature should put out that power if not more. End of discussion. If they can't learn to make one correctly, this will keep killing batteries early for people that use their portables in docking setups.
When will these dock manufacturers learn that they should be providing the same amount of wattage that the power adapter included with the device provides.
My original 16" had a deteriorated battery only after a year of use because of OWC's thunderbolt 3 dock providing 85w of power when the computer expected 96w during full gpu / cpu use. It would actively drain the battery while in use, causing an early failure.
The M2 16" MBP comes with a 140w power adapter. Any dock currently being made that is "professional" in nature should put out that power if not more. End of discussion. If they can't learn to make one correctly, this will keep killing batteries early for people that use their portables in docking setups.
There are so many inexpensive USB audio in microphones, I’m not sure it’s needed anymore. But I agree it would be nice to have!
I've never seen something like that before, but that is the consequence of Apple including so few ports in their laptops these days!It's kind of hideous and seriously expensive. I'd rather have a GaN Power adapter and one of those 30$ docks that's super slip and sticky-taped to the back of the MacBook screen at all times.
Remember unplugging something from every single port when you wanted to take the laptop on the go, versus unplugging one cable? Remember how much thicker your laptop had to be to support some of those ports, whether or not you ever used them?
Not possible in this universe. The dock's circuits require power and many of the ports also require power for the devices attached. This power doesn't come out of the air.
The power supply for the dock has to provide it. The dock has to split the available power, after taking its own share, with the ports and with the supply to the host. The host gets what's left over.
Then they need to design a dock that includes enough power for both the ports, and the actual PD circuitry that delivers to the portable, ergo 106w for example. Not rocket science and entirely possible. They are choosing to cheap out / not engineering for the power needs of the product it's designed to work for.
In recent conversation with an OWC support rep, they did it to save cost.
But given the terrible reliability of most mfr's TB4 docks, the same type and number of ports, etc., it may be that they are all using the same chipset.
And OBTW... does anyone know of a Thunderbolt 4 dock that reliably presents all attached SSDs, without a plugfest, and doesn't drop the ports? (... I didn't even ask about display drive connections!!)
I wouldn’t complain too loudly if I were you. Long gone are the days something was designed to function fantastically but look kinda good. Now too often the emphasis is on looking good or unique first, but with an absent-minded step back in function in some way or another.
For my Apple products, nowadays I think it is way better to work good than to look good!