Hands-on: Kensington's first Thunderbolt 5 dock is built for the future

Thunderbolt 5 is here...but you'll need more than just this well-built Kensington dock to take advantage of it.

- MARK HACHMAN

Kensington’s first Thunderbolt 5 dock, the future of PC I/O, is here! Unfortunately, it’s just one part of the equation.

The Kensington SD5000T5 EQ Thunderbolt 5 Triple 4K Docking Station is the first Thunderbolt 5 dock I’ve seen inside PCWorld’s lab. Kensington will begin selling the dock today on Amazon for $399.99, a substantial premium to the majority of Thunderbolt 4 docks already on the market. (One exception is Kingston’s SD5800T [fave.co/3No58fo], a premium Thunderbolt 4 dock).

Thunderbolt 5, however, offers significant advantages (fave.co/3txpsEA) compared to Thunderbolt 4 docks, which have offered the same 40Gbps throughput as the older Thunderbolt 3 docks. Thunderbolt 5 boosts that to 80Gbps, and in certain cases even up to 120Gbps in a single direction. That equates to two 8K, 60Hz displays, or three 4K displays at 144Hz. TB5 should also allow laptops to connect to external GPUs, a feature that Thunderbolt 4 passed over, and USB-C charging up to 140W.

The problem is that laptop docking stations like the Kensington SD5000T5 are part of an ecosystem. It’s not enough to own just a Thunderbolt 5 docking station; you need a laptop with Thunderbolt 5 support and probably high-speed components to connect to. Put simply, Thunderbolt 4 allows connections to a pair of 4K displays at 60Hz; Thunderbolt 5 can connect to two 4K displays at 144Hz, which are considerably more expensive. Those pieces are what I’m lacking here, and what prevents me from writing a “real” review at present.

Thunderbolt 5 is backward compatible with Thunderbolt 4 and Thunderbolt 3, however, so you can buy this dock even if you don’t have a Thunderbolt 5–capable laptop or peripherals. Incidentally, as Kensington’s documents note, this is a Windows-only dock; Apple has not committed to Thunderbolt 5 support at press time. Kensington also says that its dock is officially certified by Intel.