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OWC Takes $130 Off Popular 14-Port Thunderbolt Dock During Back To School Sale

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OWC kicked off a new Back To School sale this week, offering big discounts on a variety of USB-C docks, memory cards, external drives and enclosures, and Mac accessories. Some of these deals won't be applied until you add the items to your cart, at which time an automatic coupon will be applied to your order.

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Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with OWC. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.

There are a few notable deals in this sale, including $130 off the popular 14-Port Thunderbolt Dock for Mac, available for $149.99, which is the steepest discount we've seen in months on the accessory. If you purchase a qualifying new or used Mac at the same time as this dock, you can get an additional $20 off the accessory at checkout.

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If you're on the hunt for more discounts, be sure to visit our Apple Deals roundup where we recap the best Apple-related bargains of the past week.



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Article Link: OWC Takes $130 Off Popular 14-Port Thunderbolt Dock During Back To School Sale
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/07/19/owc-back-to-school-sale/
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irrg said:
…Is this thing ever full price?
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Probably the bare minimum required to be able to advertise the sale price. (In the US there are regulations by the FTC that items advertised at a discount must be sold at the advertised full price, but it doesn't go into specifics for how often or for how long).
 
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I’ve been using this dock for a couple of years now and I am very satisfied with its performance. It’s Thunderbolt 3 but more than fast enough for my personal needs. Much better than a damn USB hub.
 
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bradman83 said:
Probably the bare minimum required to be able to advertise the sale price. (In the US there are regulations by the FTC that items advertised at a discount must be sold at the advertised full price, but it doesn't go into specifics for how often or for how long).
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Imagine a hypothetical episode of To Tell The Truth:

I am the one who paid full retail for the OWC 14-port Thunderbolt dock. I sit here, bathed in the glow of a thousand screens, each plugged into my dock. I didn’t wait for a sale—no, I paid full price because I’m the hero tech needs, not the cheapskate it deserves. With these 14 ports, I’m beyond connected—I’m everywhere. I stream, game, mine crypto, and charge my electric car, all while sipping coffee from a USB-powered mug. Bow to me, the full-price legend, the port overlord!
Click to expand...
 
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shadowbird423 said:
I wonder when the articles mentioning this OWC dock will start talking about the reliability problems owners have run into.
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I must have been lucky then. I've had 2 of these (currently using one) and found them to be rock solid. The first one I accidentally destroyed with alcohol.
 
shadowbird423 said:
I wonder when the articles mentioning this OWC dock will start talking about the reliability problems owners have run into.
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hah, I just popped in to ask if this was the one they keep putting on sale that people keep complaining about over reliability. Thanks for answering that ;)
 
I have had the TB4 version since it came out, and it's worked fine. I keep all the ports full with 2 monitors, drives, and mic. If I were to buy a new one today I would probably go ahead and pay for the TB5 version.
 
Man goes into fish and chip shop at the end of the day “Do you have any chips left over?” Shopkeeper says “why yes!“ man “then you shouldn’t have fried so many“
 
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I’ve had OWC docks and they are extremely unreliable, often disconnecting devices and so - it’s amazing to see them repeatedly advertised here. CalDigit ones are way better.
 
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Will someone just make a dock that is the full square size of the Mac studio instead of this half sized crap so you can just put the Mac studio on top of it?
 
5 USBA ports, i wonder if people still have things that ends in USBA, or they prefer it. i'm all USBC already, except my thunderbolt display having USBAx3 ports at the back. Getting a dock with enough USBC ports is challenge.
 
akbarali.ch said:
5 USBA ports, i wonder if people still have things that ends in USBA, or they prefer it. i'm all USBC already, except my thunderbolt display having USBAx3 ports at the back. Getting a dock with enough USBC ports is challenge.
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Most of the stuff is still on USB-A; USB-C is a minority.
 
akbarali.ch said:
5 USBA ports, i wonder if people still have things that ends in USBA, or they prefer it. i'm all USBC already, except my thunderbolt display having USBAx3 ports at the back. Getting a dock with enough USBC ports is challenge.
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Well, this is a (relatively) old Thunderbolt-3 style dock. Thunderbolt 4/5 docks typically have 2-3 downstream Thunderbolt ports.

Ultimately though - USB-A ports are cheaper to implement - both in terms of cost and i/o & power resources - than full-featured USB-C ports with support for video, USB3.2x2 and higher power delivery. Even more so c.f. USB4/Thunderbolt ports (&. multiple downstream TB ports weren't even possible until USB4/TB4). I suspect that even a minimal USB 3.2x1-only USB-C port is more expensive that USB A - and doesn't offer any performance advantage over USB-A. So it comes down to who gets to use a dongle...

As for demand, your mileage may vary. The only things I have that needs USB-C are my TB hub and USB-C displays... (and even the displays are debatable since they'd work perfectly well with DisplayPort, and while they'd need a second USB cable to support the internal hub, that would then support USB 3 rather than being limited to USB 2). I think I've maybe got one SSD that supports USB 3.2g2x2, but Mac doesn't support that mode anyhow. The USB A ports on my Caldigit hub support 10Gbps, though. Aside from that, many of my peripherals are USB 2. Basically, while I could look for a multi-USB-C hub, and replace a lot of USB A-to-B/microB cables, there is zero incentive to do that.

I think Apple scored a bit of an own goal back in 2016 by prematurely going all-USB-C on the MBP rather than just upgrading the TB2/MiniDP ports and keeping the rest - it created a huge market for hubs/docks/multiport adapters that focussed on restoring the so-called 'legacy' ports.
 
I've got one of these docks. I don't recommend it. I've got it connected to a M2 Mac Mini, and every time the Mini is rebooted you have to unplug and re-plug the dock before anything connected to it will be recognized. That seems like pretty core functionality.

It also doesn't do much for you with its Thunderbolt connectivity; the Ethernet port, for instance, is a USB-based port, not a PCIe-based one that leverages Thunderbolt.

You can do much better than this dock.
 
I’ve owned two of these docks. The first failed at 2 months - it was replaced under warranty, though that took almost two weeks to ship the bad one to OWC, have it evaluated, and receive the new one. That one failed about three weeks out of warranty and was refused replacement though these failures are well documented. While I cannot fault OWC for not replacing it outside of warranty, I can ask why these are still being shipped when they are known for their shortcomings.

I chose a different brand replacement (CalDigit) and have been very happy so far, even though my new dock was significantly more expensive.
 
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