The new M4 Pro Mac mini and the new M4 Pro and M4 Max MacBook Pro feature Thunderbolt 5 ports for the first time. Thunderbolt 5 delivers bidirectional data transfer rates of up to 80Gbps, which is 2x faster than Thunderbolt 4. It can also drive high-resolution displays using its 120Gbps throughput mode.
The universe of Thunderbolt 5 accessories is still in its infancy, however. Today, OWC announced its first Thunderbolt 5 dock, priced at $189.
This is only the second Thunderbolt 5 dock accessory on the market. The other was released last month by Kensington, the SD5000T5 dock, which features a ton of downstream Thunderbolt 5 ports, as well as legacy I/O ports like USB-A and an SD card reader.
The OWC dock is simpler, and aims to turn the single Thunderbolt 5 port on your Mac into three downstream Thunderbolt 5 ports and one USB-A port. The dock allows users to connect up to three 8K displays (using DisplayStream compression) to their machine by simply connecting a single cable.
You can also connect super-fast external drives and other Thunderbolt 5 accessories as they become available. The dock will also deliver up to 140W of power over the Thunderbolt 5 cable, so you can charge your connected MacBook Pro at full speed.
Thunderbolt 5 is fully backwards compatible, so you don’t have to worry about standards conflicts. Any older Thunderbolt or USB device that works over a USB-C cable can be connected and will work fine, they will just run at the slower speeds of the previous generation standards.
The OWC Dock is available for pre-order now, with first shipments scheduled for December.
