OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dock Review

We’ll make this one short and sweet. You’ve just upgraded to a new laptop for the home studio. And you’ve got a bunch of gear, accessories and peripherals to plug in (not to mention SD cards from your digital camera). OK, hotshot – you’re out of ports. What do you do? What DO you do? Enter the OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dock.

Luckily, the folks at OWC have made it stupid simple to solve this problem. We’ve run into it here in the office, and popping a new OWC Thunderbolt 3 dock on the desk has been a lifesaver. It’s barely bigger than a paperback book, it hooks up with one cable without any drivers, and it finally allows you to put all your periphs back into play without a silly daisy-chain of dongles, adapters and other MacGyver’d solutions. The front houses two card readers, USB slots for your gear and power charging, and the rear sports a ton more open ports for more USB 3, optical audio output (remember that once-standard feature, Mac users?), wired networking, Thunderbolt 3 and display connections. Whew!

Like any good command center, the OWC dock comers in industrial grey and…well, another shade of grey. But that’s OK – function over style, I always (sometimes) say. And since this beast clocks in under 300 bucks, it’s sleek enough for us to forgive it’s utilitarian aesthetic. You even get a Thunderbolt cable in the box, now that’s a big plus.

PROS:

adds extra ports to your computer, no fuss no muss

CONS:

none

STREET PRICE:

$279