Starting with the 2016 MacBook Pro, Apple has shifted the interface of notebook products to ThunderBolt 3, making the fuselage look more unified, but it will make many products unable to connect directly with the computer, and various docking stations will also get opportunities to flourish. Recently, Sonnet launched a new Thunderbolt docking station, adding USB-A and USB-C connectivity options, and supporting the Echo Dual NVMe Dock with up to 16TB of storage.
A lightning docking station that can open up a variety of uplink main lines and downlink equipment can make the desktop with a large number of wires become clean, which is also the pursuit of many "obsessive-compulsive" users. Sonnet's Echo Dual NVMe Dock also offers additional storage space.
The Echo Dual NVMe Dock Thunderbolt Dock provides 2 Thunderbolt downstream ports (pluggable peripherals), 1 Lightning uplink port (15W host power), 2 10Gbps USB-C (supports charging), and 2 10Gbps Type-A (supports charging). Laptop/desktop/tablet users can connect a variety of peripherals, flash drives, lightning/display devices through a single cable, and the owner needs to unplug this upstream main line.
The dock also has two M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD slots (sold separately for up to 16TB of capacity) while also supporting RAID 0 high-performance drive arrays with theoretical read/write performance of 3000MB/s and 1500MB/s.
In terms of compatibility, the Echo Dual NVMe Thunderbolt Dock supports all M1 Macs currently on sale, as well as Intel Macs with Thunderbolt 3 ports, with a minimum system requirement of macOS 10.12.6. The dock is compatible with both iPad Pro tablets with Thunderbolt ports and Windows 10/11 computers that support Raiden 3/4 ports.
At present, this docking station has been listed on the official website of Sonnet, the official price of 349.99 US dollars (about 2212 yuan), as for the M.2 SSD needs to be purchased by players themselves.
Editor's comments: The current mainstream desktops have been equipped with enough rich interfaces, and it is of little significance to purchase a docking station separately. Raiden 3 dock will be more helpful to users who use notebooks, it can greatly increase the interface of laptops, improve the convenience of computer use. However, the Sonnet Echo Dual NVMe Dock is not cheap, and it will be more cost-effective to buy USB4-level products.