CalDigit's Thunderbolt Station 2 Launches in January With $170 Pre-Order Pricing

I'm glad to see more of these appearing with various niche options like eSata.

Personally though I’m still waiting for one of these to carry multiple mini display ports or at least multiple HDMI ports. I’d gladly pay the $2-300 price for one if I could hook all 3 monitors up to it.

carestudio said:

I know I know, but you pay 3500 dollars for it vs Caldigit's $169 hub that has all below

1 1G Ethernet
1 HDMI
2 Thunderbolt
3 USB
2 Audio in/out
2 eSATA!!!!

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-- Touché

I can only imagine what this beast must look like if all of the ports were connected. Even with cable management, it has got to be an oddity.

I absolutely love my current Caldigit Thunderbolt dock, and my only gripe about it is the high pitch whine when disconnected from my laptop (easy fix just to unplug power). Hopefully thats something they were able to resolve with this new generation. I'll probably pick up one of these, since it supports 4k on the dock now.

willgreene99 said:

-- Touché

I can only imagine what this beast must look like if all of the ports were connected. Even with cable management, it has got to be an oddity.

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LOL! When thunderbolt is capable to do 100G, we will have more interfaces and ports on such hub.

So this should get 6gbps through esata?

djdeth said:

So this should get 6gbps through esata?

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Only if your device supports that throughput.

djdeth said:

So this should get 6gbps through esata?

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From the spec, it does support 6gbps.

carestudio said:

cant you simply get an Apple adapter? FireWire to Thunderbolt , only cost you 29 bucks or less.

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I could, but ideally trying to have an 'all in one thing', trying to not have too many adapters hanging down everywhere.

jrlcopy said:

I could, but ideally trying to have an 'all in one thing', trying to not have too many adapters hanging down everywhere.

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That's true. I hope caldigit can come up with more ports with different io interfaces. Not too greedy but the more ports the better

I pre-ordered two of this new thunderbolt 2 stations, hope I can receive them next week. cant wait to upgrade mine to thunderbolt 2.

This hub looks very promising, and nice design too; with tb3 coming with skylake, i wonder i should hold off until i get the skylake imac.

Although i like caldigit,
I brought a caldigit esata express-card back in 2011, was very impressed, previously, my cheap £20 card from amazon lasted 4 days.

johnnyturbouk said:

This hub looks very promising, and nice design too; with tb3 coming with skylake, i wonder i should hold off until i get the skylake imac.

Although i like caldigit,
I brought a caldigit esata express-card back in 2011, was very impressed, previously, my cheap £20 card from amazon lasted 4 days.

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Skylake probably wont be available for another year as far as I read from online articles. Thunderbolt 2 is still the main stream for another year or more.

Agree, Caldigit makes very good quality products for years and their Thunderbolt 1 hub works very well for me from 2013.

I just realized caldigit's thunderbolt 2 hub preorder ends this Sunday, so if you guys are looking for thunderbolt 2 hub, grab one or two asap. 30 dollars off for the preorder and they will start shipping on Monday.

carestudio said:

Skylake probably wont be available for another year

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{covers ears and sings} no no no no no....x10^89.

I wanted to pass this on, a brief Mac-centric site's brief review:

http://9to5mac.com/2015/01/22/review-caldigits-thunderbolt-station-2/

I wanted to find one review that shows more detail and offers feedback on whether the output audio has improved over the original version. I'm passing on this unit after seeing a pic in that review that shows the size of the power brick, about 1/2 of the size(!) of the Dock - the web portal showed lots of peripherals lit up but no power cord plugged into the back of the Dock...

I'm now leaning toward the Elgato or just putting the money toward a decent Dell/LG monitor with a built-in USB 3 hub.

Ordered two units last month and finally received mine today!!
I am really impressed by the stylish design, finish & color.
the sata ports work just fine with my old sata PM box that has five disks.
UASP from U3.0 port works fine too. Speed is great.

campyguy said:

I wanted to pass this on, a brief Mac-centric site's brief review:

http://9to5mac.com/2015/01/22/review-caldigits-thunderbolt-station-2/

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Another detailed review
http://www.tekrevue.com/caldigit-thunderbolt-station-2-review/

carestudio said:

Another detailed review
http://www.tekrevue.com/caldigit-thunderbolt-station-2-review/

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The unit looks really nice on the review. I just found that 169 is pretty good deal among others.
http://www.caldigit.com/store.asp

However, I could not find the information about super drive support? I heard some of such thunderbolt or usb docks do not support apple's super drive? no suchtech spec on the review site.

jflash said:

The unit looks really nice on the review. I just found that 169 is pretty good deal among others.
http://www.caldigit.com/store.asp

However, I could not find the information about super drive support? I heard some of such thunderbolt or usb docks do not support apple's super drive? no suchtech spec on the review site.

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Didnt you see the product page and FAQ?
YES, from my testing, it works just fine with Super Drive.

http://www.caldigit.com/KB/index.asp?KBID=140&viewlocale=1

169 is absolutely a sweet deal.....

Amazon has them on sale right now for $169.99.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00R85YSYO/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I ...

... preordered and received it about three weeks ago. Its performance is flawless to date. We have it almost fully loaded, attaching the following devices:

2x eSata HD casings
2x USB3 Drobo S boxes
1x USB2 3x hub, connecting a Apogee Jam and a LG Bluray burner
1x Gigabit Ethernet Hub
1x headphone
1x Dazzle Hollywood bridge via Thunderbolt > Fw800 > FW400 adapter

It is - by a huge margin - the best thunderbolt dock option to date, regarding performance and price.

giffut said:

... preordered and received it about three weeks ago. Its performance is flawless to date. We have it almost fully loaded, attaching the following devices:

2x eSata HD casings
2x USB3 Drobo S boxes
1x USB2 3x hub, connecting a Apogee Jam and a LG Bluray burner
1x Gigabit Ethernet Hub
1x headphone
1x Dazzle Hollywood bridge via Thunderbolt > Fw800 > FW400 adapter

It is - by a huge margin - the best thunderbolt dock option to date, regarding performance and price.

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Mine should arrive today; I actually ordered it the other day when they had it still priced at $199, but Amazon is giving me a credit for the price drop.

giffut said:

... preordered and received it about three weeks ago. Its performance is flawless to date. We have it almost fully loaded, attaching the following devices:

2x eSata HD casings
2x USB3 Drobo S boxes
1x USB2 3x hub, connecting a Apogee Jam and a LG Bluray burner
1x Gigabit Ethernet Hub
1x headphone
1x Dazzle Hollywood bridge via Thunderbolt > Fw800 > FW400 adapter

It is - by a huge margin - the best thunderbolt dock option to date, regarding performance and price.

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Nice to know. Looks like it's a best deal & unit so far. I just placed an order of two, hope to get them soon.

Received the dock and have been playing around it. so far the dock works very nice. it's much smaller footprint than I expected. installation is easy and fast. I also installed charging driver and boost up amps to my iDevices.

I see that the orientation/placement of the USB ports is poor. The StarTech 2 is better in this regard., with the back ports placed vertically.

I also read the this CalDigit is not able to support 2 eSATA devices at full speed simultaneously, they will run slower if limited by this box.