Wavlink Thunderbolt 5 Dock: Affordable fast Thunderbolt plus handy power options

This affordable Thunderbolt 5 docking station looks good and offers some useful power options.

- SIMON JARY

The Wavlink Thunderbolt 5 Docking Station is a full docking station with 12 ports, including a full four 80Gbps Thunderbolt 4 and 2.5Gb Ethernet, available at an affordable price. It features a decent rack of high-end ports, and looks fancy, too.

Even if your laptop has Thunderbolt 4 (TB4) rather than Thunderbolt 5 (TB5) connectivity, buying the newer faster standard will future-proof your purchase. Backward compatible with Thunderbolt 3 and 4, TB5 features the fastest 80Gbps bandwidth (up to 120Gbps Bandwidth Boost for unidirectional video), plus smart device daisy-chaining and super-fast storage connectivity.

SPECS AND FEATURES

> One upstream Thunderbolt 5 port (80Gbps, 140W)

> Two downstream Thunderbolt 5 ports (80Gbps, 15W)

> One downstream Thunderbolt 5 port (80Gbps, 30W)

> Four USB-A ports (10Gbps)

> Ethernet (2.5Gb)

> UHS-II SD Card reader (312MBps)

> UHS-II MicroSD Card reader (312MBps)

> 3.5mm audio jack

> 230W power supply

As well as its upstream Thunderbolt 5 port, which connects to your laptop, there are three downstream TB5 ports that connect to other devices such as monitors or storage drives: One is at the front with the upstream TB5 port, and two are at the back.

The Wavlink's connectivity options.

Wavlink's Thunderbolt 4 dock had just one downstream TB4 port as it sacrificed two possible Thunderbolt ports for dedicated HDMI 2.1 ports. With this new model, Wavlink ditches the video ports to give you the choice of which TB ports to use to connect to monitors either via a direct USB-C connection or using USB-C to DisplayPort or USB-C to HDMI adapter cables.

This gives you flexibility, and if connecting two screens, we expect you'll choose the two TB5 ports at the back.