Thunderbolt may look like a regular USB-C port on the side of your Mac or PC, but one look at CalDigit’s new TS4 Thunderbolt dock shows just how incredibly powerful it is.
CalDigit Thunderbolt Station 4 | 18-Port Dock | 98W Charging | Dual Displays | 2.5GbE
Thunderbolt is fast. Really fast. And more than that, it provides a really fat pipe so you can pump all sorts of data streams through it, simultaneously, without any delays. So you can plug in a monitor or two, some SSDs, plus audio gear, an Ethernet connection and more, and they’ll all run through a single port on the side of your laptop. And it can power all that gear, too.
"I also use a Thunderbolt dock to keep my setup organized," sales professional and Thunderbolt dock user Shawn Gonzales told Lifewire via email. "It used to feel like my desk was drowning in a sea of cables. Now everything is neatly organized because the dock gives me a central location to plug in my cables and keep them out of the way."
CalDigit’s new 18-port TS4 dock is the successor to its excellent TS3+. It adds a few more ports, more power, more speed, and gets rid of one connector. But most of all, it shows why Thunderbolt is so great and why, even at $360, it’s a great deal.