Satechi Thunderbolt 4 Slim Pro Hub review

We predict most individuals will favor a full-featured Thunderbolt dock. However in case you’d like to save lots of a bit of cash and house for a Thunderbolt 4 hub that splits the Thunderbolt connection into 4 outputs, Satechi’s Thunderbolt 4 Slim Professional Hub is a stable selection.

Like Ugreen’s merchandise, that is one other case the place producers inexplicably can’t get their names straight: On the field, that is the Thunderbolt 4 Slim Professional Hub. On Satechi’s web site, it’s the Thunderbolt 4 Slim Hub Professional. On Amazon, it’s the Satechi Thunderbolt 4 Hub Slim Professional. No less than the mannequin quantity is constant: ST-HT4SHM.

Thankfully, there’s a very simple approach to consider the Thunderbolt 4 Slim Professional Hub: It’s the older brother of the Satechi Thunderbolt 4 Slim Hub, a compact Thunderbolt hub with a 65W energy charger. This Professional model has a 95W energy brick, and Amazon at the very least is promoting the Slim Professional Hub for a similar value because the Slim Hub. Easy, proper?

In the event you’ve been following our opinions, we admit to a bias: We like hubs and docks with obtainable show ports, to save lots of you paying additional in time or cash to order a Thunderbolt-qualified USB-C to HDMI cable. The one show outputs this hub consists of are upstream Thunderbolt 4 ports, so that you’ll both should fork over an additional £15/$15 or so for the suitable cable (I personal and suggest these Uni cables) or have one of many small however rising numbers of USB-C shows with a USB-C or Thunderbolt enter (not output!) port.

This overview informs our ongoing suggestions for the very best Thunderbolt 4 and USB4 hubs and docks chart.

In any other case, this hub is straightforward: There’s a 10Gbps USB-A port on the entrance for a mouse or a keyboard, alongside the downstream Thunderbolt 4 port. On the again, there are 4 Thunderbolt ports, good for dangling a USB-C dongle off of, charging a smartphone with a rated 15W of charging energy. And that’s all, save for a small energy LED.

So why purchase this hub? Its measurement. A bit smaller than 5.5×3 inches, this hub matches properly in a backpack, and the charging brick — usually the ungainliest a part of a powered hub or dock — measures about 4.75×2 inches, plus a bit for the cords. (Amazon clients complain that the charger is bigger than the hub, however that’s not the case.)

To me, that’s sufficiently small to qualify as a journey product, and Satechi even features a low cost pair of zipped plastic luggage for storage. Sure, the chassis is aluminum, serving to hold the hub cool, however the dock solely weighs 0.53 kilos — not too dangerous.

And that’s this dock in a nutshell. Since this can be a Thunderbolt 4 hub, every bottom port presents Thunderbolt connectivity, which implies you’ve a selection of utilizing each to drive a show (simply as much as 4K, 60Hz per port) by way of a direct cable, or join one in all our really useful USB-C docks to offer the I/O flexibility (SD card slots, say) that this Satechi hub foregoes. Doing so makes the entire association relatively ungainly, however it’s doable.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Word that this dock doesn’t embody a devoted smartphone charging port, however every upstream Thunderbolt port places out sufficient energy that it isn’t a difficulty. Oddly, although, one Thunderbolt port delivered 7.8W, whereas the others handed 8.95W or near it. That’s nonetheless sufficient to fast-charge a smartphone, however the discrepancy was just a little puzzling.

The front-mounted USB-A port was too near the downstream Thunderbolt port to allow a studying with our USB multimeter, and the shut port placement is just a little pointless and annoying. I/O efficiency, in any other case, was fantastic.

We measured the dock passing 78W of energy to our check pocket book, which appears about proper — the dock will all the time take some energy for itself. The cable measures 2 ft, 7 inches — a comfortably lengthy size.

Right here’s the choice you’ll should make. In the event you want a distinct segment Thunderbolt 4 hub just like the Thunderbolt 4 Slim Professional Hub, okay — there are different, cheaper, fuller-featured Thunderbolt docks obtainable in our really useful record, however purchase what you want.

Nevertheless, you may shave off £50/$50 or so with our really useful Thunderbolt 4 hub, which (at press time) is the Plugable 5-in-1 Thunderbolt Hub. It’s mainly precisely the identical, with one exception: Plugable’s hub solely ships with a 60W charger, whereas Satechi’s presents 95W.

Pull out your laptop computer’s charger and see if you’ll find what number of watts it consumes: If it’s a 45W system, purchase the Plugable. However in case you personal a extra highly effective laptop computer that expenses from the USB-C port, it’s best to think about this hub as a substitute.

This overview initially appeared on PCWorld.