Belkin Upgrades Thunderbolt Express Dock with USB 3.0 and eSATA, Bumps Price to $399.99

[pmz]

What I never understand about consumers is the tenacity to complain about the price of one product A, then compare buying product A to product B which more expensive, and doesn't fill the same gap for product A.

Might as well just say, "HECK $400! For another $800 I could buy a car!"

The ACD is an entirely different type of product. Yes, it has hub features, but a user needs to want the 27" display feature first and foremost because it's a display. Then you have to want to spend $1000 on your display.

The Belkin and Matrox boxes are not meant to compete with ACDs, nor Mac Minis, nor PCs, nor anything that isn't a hub . . . . hence the reason for the reactions to it's outrageous price.

Everyone wants a 27" ACD

But really, if I'm "considering" buying this hub, and I look at what I get for the price....then I look at the ACD and see that I get the same hub features, all $400 worth. If I was going to spend that 400 on that amount of features, I can look at the ACD as now only costing $600. My total spending is still $1000 instead of $400, but the value I receive is better at $1000.

 

[nuckinfutz]

I think sane economics state that if you only need spend $400 then spend $400.

If you need a new or larger display then the TBD comes into play as a value move.

All the kvetching about price is really silly. Belkin knows what market they are targeting and it's not the home user who simply wants to connect a simple drive.

This product is for someone that manages a lot of storage and needs to connect and disconnect to that storage quickly and easily.

People in this scenario aren't going to view $450 as that much of an impediment if they can see the time savings and lack of hassle.

 

[BiggAW]

I think sane economics state that if you only need spend $400 then spend $400.

If you need a new or larger display then the TBD comes into play as a value move.

All the kvetching about price is really silly. Belkin knows what market they are targeting and it's not the home user who simply wants to connect a simple drive.

This product is for someone that manages a lot of storage and needs to connect and disconnect to that storage quickly and easily.

People in this scenario aren't going to view $450 as that much of an impediment if they can see the time savings and lack of hassle.

Yeah, pretty much. The thing that they blew, however, is not broadening the audience. If they added double or triple monitor support, they would have supported a much broader audience, but instead, they drilled it in right down to the very narrow niche of professional digital content creators who deal with large amounts of data, and have extreme data storage and transfer requirements, which is product is great for. That's a small group of people. Hobbyists and prosumers like me are fine with a USB 2 spaghetti monster as a docking solution. If they had added more monitor support, they would have appealed to people who aren't professionals.

 

[firestarter]

Everyone wants a 27" ACD

But really, if I'm "considering" buying this hub, and I look at what I get for the price....then I look at the ACD and see that I get the same hub features, all $400 worth. If I was going to spend that 400 on that amount of features, I can look at the ACD as now only costing $600. My total spending is still $1000 instead of $400, but the value I receive is better at $1000.

The problem with the ADC is that it only supports Thunderbolt as a monitor connection interface. If you ever want to hook up any other computer, an older mac, a camcorder, your iPad, a camera that outputs HDMI etc. you're SOL because the monitor won't accept that input.

For me, this makes the standard monitor + separate breakout box a lot more attractive. I would hate to spend that amount of money for a monitor which is that inflexible, which won't work with any of my older kit, and which is tied into such a limited range of devices.

 

[BiggAW]

The problem with the ADC is that it only supports Thunderbolt as a monitor connection interface. If you ever want to hook up any other computer, an older mac, a camcorder, your iPad, a camera that outputs HDMI etc. you're SOL because the monitor won't accept that input.

For me, this makes the standard monitor + separate breakout box a lot more attractive. I would hate to spend that amount of money for a monitor which is that inflexible, which won't work with any of my older kit, and which is tied into such a limited range of devices.

Quite true. I much prefer Dell displays, as you can hook them up to just about anything from a 486 to a Mac Pro or a custom built PC.

 

[coolspot18]

It was already too expensive at $299. At $399 I doubt it will sell well. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised to see USB 3.0 on the next Apple Thunderbolt Display. Why not just get that for $600 more, or even a Mac Mini for $200 more?

+1!

Way too expensive, $99.00 might be more reasonable, or more like $49.99.

 

[MagicBoy]

+1!

Way too expensive, $99.00 might be more reasonable, or more like $49.99.

Parts costs are higher than $99.

There are ethernet, audio, USB etc controllers in the unit. Thunderbolt essentially just extends the PCIe bus.

 

[coolspot18]

So considering the max speed for usb 3.0 is 5.0mbps and thunderbolt is double that, then if you have 2 usb 3.0 devices connected won't you be using the max speed of thunderbolt, therefor any other connection will drastically slow down the speed

A USB hub is limited to 5gbps; one or more devices can be connected to a hub, but each device will share the total bandwidth.

Chances are, this device will only have 1 USB 3.0 hub (for cost reasons), therefore no matter how many USB 3.0 devices you plug in, the aggregate bandwidth will max out at 5gbps.

 

[awer25]

Parts costs are higher than $99.

There are ethernet, audio, USB etc controllers in the unit. Thunderbolt essentially just extends the PCIe bus.

Somewhere earlier in the thread, someone listed the controllers and their costs. It came out to around $21 IIRC.

 

[MagicBoy]

Somewhere earlier in the thread, someone listed the controllers and their costs. It came out to around $21 IIRC.

A sample of those they could find, not a complete or accurate list. Factor in the thunderbolt controller and the cable and it's impossible.

 

[joe1946]

If Apple replaces USB 2.0 with USB 3.0 on future Macs then Thunderbolt is dead meat. $50 for a TB cable ? I paid $99 for a 2TB USB 3.0 ext HDD with USB 3.0 cable in 2010.

 

[MagicBoy]

If Apple replaces USB 2.0 with USB 3.0 on future Macs then Thunderbolt is dead meat. $50 for a TB cable ? I paid $99 for a 2TB USB 3.0 ext HDD with USB 3.0 cable in 2010.

I don't believe that for a second. There's more to USB and Thunderbolt than plugging in external HDDs. People have been confidently predicting the passing of high speed buses such as SCSI and Firewire since USB 2.0 launched. They are still alive and kicking, and far more fit for purpose.

You want performance - you gotta pay for it. Thunderbolt prices will fall when adoption is more widespread.

 

[BiggAW]

I don't believe that for a second. There's more to USB and Thunderbolt than plugging in external HDDs. People have been confidently predicting the passing of high speed buses such as SCSI and Firewire since USB 2.0 launched. They are still alive and kicking, and far more fit for purpose.

You want performance - you gotta pay for it. Thunderbolt prices will fall when adoption is more widespread.

I think it will be like Firewire, where it is used very heavily by a small niche of high-end users, and the rest of us are fine with USB 2 or 3 or whatever. Quite frankly, USB 2 is working just fine for me. I'll see how it performs when I'm running 5TB of storage, all my peripherals and 2 widescreen monitors off of one USB 2 cable, but I don't foresee any limitations, even with that much stuff.

 

[MagicBoy]

I think it will be like Firewire, where it is used very heavily by a small niche of high-end users, and the rest of us are fine with USB 2 or 3 or whatever. Quite frankly, USB 2 is working just fine for me. I'll see how it performs when I'm running 5TB of storage, all my peripherals and 2 widescreen monitors off of one USB 2 cable, but I don't foresee any limitations, even with that much stuff.

2 widescreen monitors using DisplayLink? Oh dear...

I've got a couple of USB 2.0 HDD's plugged into my Mac mini, but they only hold media for streaming. VMs and large docs run like crap off them, so they're on a FW800 drive which is over twice as fast.

 

[BiggAW]

2 widescreen monitors using DisplayLink? Oh dear...

I've got a couple of USB 2.0 HDD's plugged into my Mac mini, but they only hold media for streaming. VMs and large docs run like crap off them, so they're on a FW800 drive which is over twice as fast.

VMs run like crap on HDDs period. I needed to space on my SSD for my Aperture library, so I gave up on the VMs and moved them to my internal HDD.

There's a video on YouTube of a guy running several HD videos over a single USB connection with DisplayLink. Apparently the compression is great, as long as you're willing to throw a lot of CPU power at it, which is fine for me, as I have a quad i7, and when I build this setup, I am going to put it on a cooling pad.

 

[Chippy99]

The fact that they increased the price by $100 for adding USB 3.0 and eSATA shows how much they are inflating the price of this dock.

Nail - on - head.

Also, remind me - how much is an Apple Cinema Display? Er, yes $999. And how much is the Thunderbolt display with, yes, Thunderbolt connectivity and 3 USB ports and a FireWire 800 port and Gigabit Ethernet port? Would that be $999 as well?

So it is perfectly possible to add Thunderbolt connectivity (admittedly to an already overpriced device) without a huge price increase.

$400 for the Belkin device is frankly so stupid its funny.

----------

If Apple replaces USB 2.0 with USB 3.0 on future Macs then Thunderbolt is dead meat. $50 for a TB cable ? I paid $99 for a 2TB USB 3.0 ext HDD with USB 3.0 cable in 2010.

Dead meat? In the consumer market, I agree. Unless TB prices drop dramatically and fast.

As I have said on these forums before, Joe Public isn't running 12TB Promise Raid arrays or streaming uncompressed video. He's storing pictures, doing a bit of surfing, writing an email or letter or two, playing the odd game. And wants to back the computer up occasionally, using something that's fast and convenient.

Looking at either a $99 USB3 drive or a $300 Thunderbolt drive and $50 cable, it doesn't take rocket science to guess which option is going to appeal to the mass market.

EDIT, and another thing. WTF are Belkin doing over there? We announce a plan to put man on the moon in 1961 and with pre-historic technology, we achieve it by 1969.

And yet Belkin cannot get a simple bloody hub, announced and shown in September 2011 out to market before September 2012? It beggars belief.

If there was a conspiracy going to try to make Thunderbolt a commercial flop, they could not orchestrate it better between them.

 

[theluggage]

So it is perfectly possible to add Thunderbolt connectivity (admittedly to an already overpriced device) without a huge price increase.

(My bold) - but that's pretty much the point. It's impossible to know how much of the margin Apple makes on the non-TB model they're sacrificing to offer the TB for the same price. Really, the non-TB model is long overdue a price cut.

$400 for the Belkin device is frankly so stupid its funny

...So what am I going to buy instead to add USB3, eSATA and extra GB Ethernet and Firewire ports to my 2011 MacBook Pro, have a through-connection to the monitor and get the benefit of 'docking' with a single cable?

While there is no alternative, some people will want that facility and be prepared to pay. Until there is some competition, prices will stay high.

Dead meat? In the consumer market, I agree. Unless TB prices drop dramatically and fast.

Well, there's the $30 Thunderbolt-to-Ethernet adapter from Apple - however, that could be something that Apple are subsidising in order to get over the road bump of the new MacBook not having what some people see as an essential port.

Looking at either a $99 USB3 drive or a $300 Thunderbolt drive and $50 cable, it doesn't take rocket science to guess which option is going to appeal to the mass market.

I don't think its a problem that Thunderbolt is not the best solution for the masses to connect their backup drives. Thunderbolt is there for the things you can't do with USB (or only at the price of a large CPU overhead). If someone wants to add a fibrechannel controller or a pro audio capture card to their laptop, then Thunderbolt lets you do that - and some people will pay what it takes.

I think that the dock is, potentially, the main Thunderbolt product that will appeal to non-specialists. Personally, I have a 2011 MBP, so I'm a bit stuck for places to plug that USB3 drive - but if I plug that Belkin dock in I'd have USB3, eSATA and an extra Firewire to choose from, all performing as if they were hanging off the computer's internal PCIe bus.

 

[Digital Skunk]

Everyone wants a 27" ACD

But really, if I'm "considering" buying this hub, and I look at what I get for the price....then I look at the ACD and see that I get the same hub features, all $400 worth. If I was going to spend that 400 on that amount of features, I can look at the ACD as now only costing $600. My total spending is still $1000 instead of $400, but the value I receive is better at $1000.

The only thing is that you have to be in the market for a display first, not a hub.

On the ultimate spender side it makes sense, just grab the ACD and get what you want in the hub plus a 27" ACD!

But on the budget conscience, which many users on the earlier pages don't seem to be, won't go out looking for a hub (since they already have a display or don't need one), complain about spending $400, then up the ante to $1000 and a display.

For example, I wouldn't go looking for a laptop to work in the field and eyeball the RMBP. Complain about how it costs $2500 for a 15.4" laptop, then turn around and buy a $4000 Alienware desktop with SLI/Crossfire GPUs.

p.s. There's no eSATA on the ATD.

p.p.s. I DO want an ATD to connect to my 27" iMac eventually.

 

[Chippy99]

Thunderbolt is there for the things you can't do with USB.

I keep hearing this argument, or variants of it. In principle I could agree: TB for external PCI-Express devices and very high speed peripherals such as big raid arrays; USB for "normal" stuff like portable back up disks. Makes sense.

Unfortunately Apple took a different view. Up to last week, by not supporting USB3, they effectively tried to push TB to the masses for everything that needed greater than FW800 speeds. TB was/is their interface of choice for backup disks and external drives of all sorts, given the pitiful performance levels of such through USB2 and firewire.

The TB display proves this point perfectly. Even in late 2011 when it was introduced, they chosen to put USB2 ports on it. Note the word "chose". This was not a space restriction, nor an Ivybridge chipset issue. It was a pure marketing decision: shall we put a PCI-Express-USB2 bridge in there, or a PCI-Express-USB3 bridge? The NEC USB3 chip is less than $2, probably significantly less to Apple, yet they chose USB2.

You can draw your own conclusions as to what their thinking was, but it wasn't cost. To me it is pretty obvious: They want people to use TB wherever possible, and not USB3. USB3 is a threat in their eyes and I am sure they have added it only reluctantly to latest MacBooks.

 

[theluggage]

Up to last week, by not supporting USB3, they effectively tried to push TB to the masses for everything that needed greater than FW800 speeds.

Or, as has been repeatedly suggested, they were simply waiting for the Ivy Bridge chips with built-in USB3 rather than faffing around adding USB controller chips to their already crowded laptop and SFF motherboards.

I don't dispute that there may have been an element of strategy with the TB display not supporting USB3 - you wouldn't want to announce USB3 and Thunderbolt support on the same day.

Longer term, however, Apple's opinions about USB3 don't alter the truth: USB3 will almost certainly offer a much better choice of cheap, consumer-oriented devices, but Thunderbolt will have applications beyond the capability of USB3.

Also bear in mind that Thunderbolt is part of Apple's roadmap for shifting "pro" users onto laptop and SFF machines. One of the things that got quietly dumped along with the 17" was the ExpressCard slot - I know some video pros used that for specialised equipment from Matrox, Black Magic et. al. and those are some of the first people to produce Thunderbolt versions of their devices.

 

[Chippy99]

Or, as has been repeatedly suggested, they were simply waiting for the Ivy Bridge chips with built-in USB3 rather than faffing around adding USB controller chips to their already crowded laptop and SFF motherboards.

I don't dispute that there may have been an element of strategy with the TB display not supporting USB3 - you wouldn't want to announce USB3 and Thunderbolt support on the same day.

Longer term, however, Apple's opinions about USB3 don't alter the truth: USB3 will almost certainly offer a much better choice of cheap, consumer-oriented devices, but Thunderbolt will have applications beyond the capability of USB3.

Also bear in mind that Thunderbolt is part of Apple's roadmap for shifting "pro" users onto laptop and SFF machines. One of the things that got quietly dumped along with the 17" was the ExpressCard slot - I know some video pros used that for specialised equipment from Matrox, Black Magic et. al. and those are some of the first people to produce Thunderbolt versions of their devices.

Agree with most of the above. The one thing I would say though, is why does the TB display have no USB3 ports on it? Its not to do with Ivybridge. It's also not a board layout or space issue. And at $1.70 a chip, it's not cost either. Why did Apple deliberately put USB2 ports on its flagship Monitor / hub, more then 1 year after USB3 was available?

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Agree with most of the above. The one thing I would say though, is why does the TB display have no USB3 ports on it? Its not to do with Ivybridge. It's also not a board layout or space issue. And at $1.70 a chip, it's not cost either. Why did Apple deliberately put USB2 ports on its flagship Monitor / hub, more then 1 year after USB3 was available?

I can't help but wonder if Steve had something to do with that decision. While perhaps unlikely, it's not impossible that Steve Jobs was opposed to USB3 and Tim Cook simply is not and with Steve gone, perhaps Tim Cook simply decided to make the correct business decision instead of the "Let's push my dream" thinking Apple kept trying for in the past (e.g. when Firewire first came out, they not only didn't include USB2 at first, but pushed Firewire on the iPods until it became obvious that it was seriously hampering their sales potential, but that didn't stop Steve from trying to leverage it anyway).

 

[AidenShaw]

...why does the TB display have no USB3 ports on it? ...

I can't help but wonder if Steve had something to do with that decision...

Exactly - the late turtlenecked overlord didn't want USB 3.0.

But he's gone, and perhaps the new leaders of Apple will think of what's better for Apple's customers.

 

[theluggage]

Agree with most of the above. The one thing I would say though, is why does the TB display have no USB3 ports on it? Its not to do with Ivybridge. It's also not a board layout or space issue. And at $1.70 a chip, it's not cost either.

First, the per-unit cost of an interface chip - unless its astronomical - has very little to do with the costs of designing, testing, manufacturing and supporting a product that uses it. For one thing, they'd have had to come up with OS X drivers for the NEC USB3 controller and test it across a wide range of peripherals.

Secondly, how many people are really gagging for USB3 on their Mac? FW800 is fine for Time Machine, works with older Macs while speed freaks might hang out for Thunderbolt.

At some stage, someone had to go through a long wish-list of features, all of which would have been nice, and decide which ones they were going to spend their development budget on. Personally, I'd have liked eSATA, while others might have wanted an ExpressCard slot.

I'm sure that one factor in that thinking was "do we really want to announce our first USB 3 support at the same time as Thunderbolt", but I don't think its quite the conspiracy you see.

 

[Chippy99]

Secondly, how many people are really gagging for USB3 on their Mac?

Er, most of them??!?!

I bought a cheap Samsung 1TB USB3 drive last year for about £80 (including the cable!) and it flies along backing up Windows at about 150MB/s.

Who would *not* want that?