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What are the reasons for getting a TB3 dock for the MBP?
- Thread starter hajime
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Some will charge your laptop
You may have USB-A thumb drives
You may have perfectly serviceable USB-A backup drives
You may need a SD card reader
You may need to power one or more monitors
You may need ethernet but your laptop doesn't have an ethernet port
A few things there
You may have USB-A thumb drives
You may have perfectly serviceable USB-A backup drives
You may need a SD card reader
You may need to power one or more monitors
You may need ethernet but your laptop doesn't have an ethernet port
A few things there
I don't know.
You can connect 2 computers with a dock but whether both computers could share the dock's ports I couldn't say.
Somebody currently using a dock may be able to advise.
It is very useful when you are are connecting a ton of different devices and you need the bandwidth to run something like one or more high resolution displays and/or external solid state drives such as those using Thunderbolt 3 + NVMe or (10 Gbps) USB 3.2 Gen 2 + NVMe. My 16 inch MBP is (through the use of a Thunderbolt dock and a powered USB 2.0 hub that is plugged into the Thunderbolt dock) connected to two external displays, numerous hard drives (some plugged into the dock, some plugged into the hub on the monitors), a laser printer, a photo printer, a mouse fob, a wired mechanical keyboard, a Lightning cable for the iPhone, and speakers, and any USB thumb drives I might be using. Effectively, there is no way they could have fit this many ports on the MBP, and the insanely high bandwidth of Thunderbolt 3 enables one or two cables going to the MBP to run a crazy amount of devices. Some of the newer Thunderbolt 3 docks will also work with computers that have USB-C ports that only support the USB protocol, and lack Thunderbolt 3 (albeit at limited speed.) However, if you don't need the bandwidth that TB3 offers, a standard USB-C dock is potentially a much more economical route.
If it were a NAS, the dock wouldn't be relevant. You mean a DAS, directly attached storage.
I used one briefly but decided to let the wife have the MBP so I have mine on sale for a 16" MBP Space gray:
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-macbook-pro-16-space-grey-used-once.2276042/
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-macbook-pro-16-space-grey-used-once.2276042/
Only one cable can connect the Mac to the dock. The other TB3 port you see on some docks is an output that can go to other Thunderbolt peripherals, such as a display, a hard drive, or another dock that supports TB3 (or, USB-C/DisplayPort if the dock has a Titan Ridge chipset IIRC.) If you need more than 40 Gbps between the devices you are using, you need to access one of the two TB3 ports on the other side of the Mac, and use it to go to either a second dock or directly to a device. Many users would never find themselves in that situation. However, those wanting to use one or more high resolutions displays (depending on the compression situation) in conjunction with high bandwidth I/O storage devices may run into the issue.
NAS stands for network attached storage and so it would not be connected to the dock.
Not really.
I use an Apple USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter to connect to an external 4K TV via HDMI. I can also use its USB port to connect to legacy device and another port to charge the MBP. Last week I bought another 4K display which I can use an additional TB3 port on my MBP16" to drive it.
Few months ago I bought an Anker TB3 dock. It became very hot quickly and I had issue in using it to drive a 4K TV at chroma 4:4:4. I wonder if there is any point to continue to try different docks.
I used the Larnt docking station and I have not encountered this situation.
But I think 4:4:4 occupies too much bandwidth and causes heat. I suggest you ask Anker's customer service first, if it is a product quality problem, they will replace it with you.