Laptop makers sometimes don’t want to clutter the clean lines of their products by adding additional logos, it seems. Fortunately, most laptops now choose to highlight their Thunderbolt capabilities, so the ports should be well-marked. But some laptop makers use a similar lightning-bolt icon to indicate that a USB-C port can be used for charging your phone, and not for Thunderbolt. Thunderbolt ports are supposed to have a small lightning-bolt icon to identify them.

Put another way, all Thunderbolt ports are USB-C, but not all USB-C ports are Thunderbolt-equipped. A Thunderbolt port may look indistinguishable from a USB-C port, since they both use the same physical USB-C connection. The short answer: Look at the laptop’s published specifications to be sure. Kensington Thunderbolt 4 Dual 4K Dock (SD5780T) review However, this dock didn’t present any performance or thermal issues, and if you understand that one of the Thunderbolt ports can be used for charging your smartphone, you’ll find this dock delivers virtually everything you’ll need. Kensington’s dock was also worryingly expensive when we first reviewed it, but price cuts have brought the price way down from $399 to about $260 or so. If flexibility is what you want, we’d recommend our runner-up pick, the Plugable TBT3-UDZ, instead. It’s not perfect this dock only includes support for one display port, requiring you to buy a converter cable or dongle. Kensington Thunderbolt 4 Dual 4K Dock (SD5780T) is the winner. We then thought that the Plugable UD-4VPD would fit the bill, but an intensive gaming session caused the dock to overheat and shut down. We originally thought our best pick would be the Kensington SD5760T, a dock that featured an ideal mix of ports on paper but also some performance issues. We’ll explain the differences in the FAQ that follows our recommendations, clarifying the terminology to help you understand what to buy and how to save some money, too. Our best USB-C hubs and dongles are covered in a separate story. We’ll close by recommending our favorite DisplayLink USB-C docks-simpler, cheaper solutions that have recently emerged.

This roundup begins with the very best Thunderbolt docks, including budget options. Good Thunderbolt docks, whether Thunderbolt 4 or 5, can also charge your smartphone. Thunderbolt 5 won’t be available until 2024, but will support three 4K displays, at 144Hz each. Thunderbolt 4, with its 40Gbps, allows for two 4K displays at 60Hz apiece. A 10Gbps USB-C hub can only power a single 4K display at 30Hz. (Look for the “lightning bolt” logo to distinguish them.) But displays, especially 4K displays, consume gobs of bandwidth. Thunderbolt docks use the same USB-C connector. The best USB-C hubs and dongles provide legacy ports (USB-A, microSD, and others) for connecting PC peripherals like mice, printers, external hard drives, and more. Why buy a Thunderbolt dock? Because of the bandwidth it provides.

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