Is this the old Sonnet company where we purchased ppc 603e upgrades? 
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Sonnet's Latest Thunderbolt 4 Dock Features Internal SSD Enclosure
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The very same: https://www.sonnettech.com/about/index.htmlIs this the old Sonnet company where we purchased ppc 603e upgrades?
I was intending to be responding to a previous poster who claimed their NVMe was getting 3000 mbps (which would be MegaBits per second). I never said that 800MB/s was fast, or acceptable, only that units matter in these discussions. Perhaps you should not read more into a post than it actually says?
So I am guilty of responding to the wrong post. So very very sorry.
This video is what happens when you decide you must do a super vertical YouTube short of a product that is about as horizontal and flat as a pancake.
A standard NVMe drive can easily drive over 5000MB/s (40Gbps)
The real answer here is that this is likely using an M2 SATA3 (6Gbps) slot, and likely to make sure there’s enough bandwidth for the rest of the dock.
Not only that, previously with TB3 an NVMe enclosure to a Mac could only do 2400MB/s or so, but with TB4 the limit was lifted to around 3000MB/s now.
But anyway, the fact that the built-in drive of this dock is limited to SATA speed is Sonnet's design choice. Though a TB4 dock wouldn't get allocated 4 PCI lanes for peripheral like previously could with TB3.
Bingo. Anyone whining about the SSD speed is completely ignoring this.
A pair of 4K displays (or even a single 5K/6K display for that matter) is going to eat as much of that 40Gbps as it can. The SSD slot is simply there as a bonus*. Can't have a fast SSD and a modern high-res/high-refresh display sharing the same cable — not with today's TB3/4 speeds.
*The product team/marketing/boss wants an exclusive feature to make this unit stand out from the crowd, even if its usefulness is compromised
No kidding. I have an OWC 4M2 Thunderbolt 3 RAID enclosure with four 2TB SSDs in a RAID 1+0 configuration for a total of 4TB of storage, and though the write speed is slower, at only 956 write, it does have 2,600 read speeds. And that's connected to my Mac Studio via my CalDigit T4 Thunderbolt Dock that has 18 ports. And it doesn't cost that much more.
It is likely that this product’s controller chip is dedicating one of the four PCIe lanes available for Thunderbolt 3 / 4 connectivity to the SSD slot. TB3/4 is effectively an externalized PCIe 3.0 x 4, with each lane providing 10Gbps bandwidth. Since there are several protocol overheads including 8b/10b encoding for data, it’s easy to see the 10Gbps dwindle to 800MB/s max throughout.
BTW, the tech specs say that it uses the M.2 NVME SSDs, not the MSATA variety. so the limit is not due to SATA3’s 6Gbps max bandwidth. The SSDs using that standard maxes out at ~550MB/a anyway.
BTW, the tech specs say that it uses the M.2 NVME SSDs, not the MSATA variety. so the limit is not due to SATA3’s 6Gbps max bandwidth. The SSDs using that standard maxes out at ~550MB/a anyway.
Compared to caldigit’s offering, this looks… really attractive. I doubt I’d need the SSD but it’s nice to have if necessary.
This looked so great… But Realtek Ethernet 😭. Just give us a proper interface that uses PCIe over Thunderbolt and for which a driver is included in macOS (eg. Intel) and not one of these crappy NICs that uses the generic USB CDC-NCM driver.
I purchased a Belkin 2.5GBe ethernet dongle that uses CDC-NCM and the CPU load is still a lot more (at 1GBe speed) than Apple’s Thunderbolt adapter.
I purchased a Belkin 2.5GBe ethernet dongle that uses CDC-NCM and the CPU load is still a lot more (at 1GBe speed) than Apple’s Thunderbolt adapter.
Pretty good solution with 2,5Gbe and SSD, the right amount of ports, well placed.
Sonnet this week announced its latest Thunderbolt 4 dock, the Echo 20, and one of its key features is an internal enclosure for an M.2 NVMe SSD. This allows the dock to double as an external storage drive for a Mac.
Accessible from the bottom of the dock, the enclosure can hold up to an 8TB SSD and supports data transfer speeds up to 800 MB/s, according to Sonnet.
The dock is also equipped with an upstream Thunderbolt 4 port that provides up to 100W of pass-through charging to a connected Mac, two downstream Thunderbolt 4 ports, four USB-C ports with up to 10 Gbps speeds, four USB-A ports with up to 10 Gbps speeds, one HDMI 2.1 port, one 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet port, one 3.5mm combo audio jack, one 3.5mm microphone jack, left and right RCA line out jacks, and one SD card slot.
The dock is designed for use with devices equipped with Thunderbolt ports, including all of Apple's latest Mac and iPad Pro models, providing expanded connectivity for external displays, USB accessories, and other peripherals.
The Echo 20 is available to order on Sonnet's website for $299.99 in the United States and will be available at additional retailers soon. The dock has an external power supply and ships with a 0.7-meter Thunderbolt 4 cable in the box. Sonnet has a similar Thunderbolt dock that supports dual SSDs for up to 16TB of storage, but it has fewer ports.
Article Link: Sonnet's Latest Thunderbolt 4 Dock Features Internal SSD Enclosure
If you need a faster drive, buy a dedicated drive/enclosure. This is just a bonus feature on dock and designed to work within the overall bandwidth limits of TB4. Personally, I’d buy a cheap 4TB stick and use something like this for a Time Machine backup and ditch the spinning drive I use now freeing up a port.
Glyph ThunderBolt 3 NVMe SSD Dock - same kind of dock with a NVMe SSD slot is faster then this. Ive tested it myself - and that was 3 years ago!
Whats surprising about that? Ever since MacBooks / PC laptops were getting 100W USB-PD, a typical TB dock needs to provide that on top of what's drawing from the dock itself / powering some plugged USB devices as well.
On my Akitio and OWC Pro docks they even use a PC PSU style 6-pin plug.
800 MB/s is fine for shifting bulky documents etc. off your expensive system drive, or as a first-line-of-defense Time Machine backup... but if you want a fast SSD, why would you put it in a multi-function hub where it had to compete for bandwidth with displays and other devices?
If you care about speed the way to use multi-port docks like this is to use them to consolidate >=4k displays, lower speed or seldom-used devices and laptop charging to free up your Mac's other Thunderbolt ports for your speed/latency-critical devices.