The Thunderbolt 4 market has gained a new entry with the release of Anker’s new Apex Thunderbolt 4 Docking Station. Another powerful-looking solution for those looking to break out from a simple TB4 port to up to 12 different ports of connectivity.
This new dock looks to feature some of the greatest advantages of TB4, including plenty of connectivity and plenty of power. The latter of which, you have up to 110W of output power that can be used to charge the laptop connected to it (up to 90W), as well as an additional mobile device (up to 20W).
On the back, there are two HDMI ports that can supply up to 4K@60 each. There is an additional TB4 port to break out to another TB device that can also be used as a monitor output. If using it as a single monitor out, it can accomplish 4K@120 or 8K@30 to a single screen. Then it dumbs down to 4K@60 when using dual or triple-monitors mixed with the HDMI ports (the HDMI ports seem to drop to 4K@30 when using triple-display within Windows–per the specs).
There is also a gigabit Ethernet port and four USB ports. Of those USB ports, two are USB 3.1 Gen 2 with up to 10GB throughput each), while the other two are simple USB 2.0 for basic accessories like mice and keyboards.
On the front, you have the TB4 port that connects to your laptop (or computer) that provides all this connectivity plus the (up to) 90W of charging power. Next to it is a USB-C PD port for charging that other device with, which is also a USB 3.1 Gen 2 with up to 10GB throughput. There is a multi-use audio port (headphones, mic, speakers, etc) and an SD card slot.
So there should definitely be a lot of power packed into this dock. We aren’t a big fan of USB 2.0 on anything anymore since it is nice to have the option to skip the use of small accessories and take advantage of additional devices that require USB 3.x. It’s also too bad you don’t get a few more TB4 outputs for other TB4 devices. Because of this, we do kind of like the OWC TB4 dock better. However, this still provides a lot of output to the connected laptop as well as another device, which is important when it comes to minimizing cables/connections.
The Anker Apex Thunderbolt 4 Docking Station will begin shipping on July 1st and can be ordered right for an MSRP of $299. A brave price that runs $20 than even OWC’s dock, so it will be interesting to see how well this one does in the market.
