They had to be placed last in the Thunderbolt chain… and the chain was limited to just one bus-powered device!

Not sure why this was thought to be a good idea, but this requires you to creatively cable manage this main cable around the dock and back behind your desk. If you use a laptop as your main computer and regularly move that laptop to and from a desk with multiple peripherals, you can leave all of those accessories plugged into the dock so that when you sit down at your desk, you can simply plug your Thunderbolt cable into the laptop to connect everything instantly. Even if you have a PC with Thunderbolt 3, USB 4, or USB-C, many of these docks will provide extra ports, charging, and more.

For someone who uses any Thunderbolt accessories, this is an automatic dealbreaker, but plenty of people don’t.

can you explain to me, how I can run 3 apple studio displays over Tb4 when there are only 2 ports on the back, and the monitor dosn't support passthrough.If you mainly need additional Thunderbolt connectors, you might choose the OWC dock over the CalDigit TS3 Plus. Triple Extended Displays is the ability to have three external monitors that extends the desktop of the laptop (with lid open). The Element Hub is another fantastic docking solution made by CalDigit, which holds a number of spots in our best laptop docking station roundup. The number that can be used with your laptop depends upon the power of your computer and its graphics card capabilities.

Just connect the SuperDrive to an open USB-A port on the OWC 11-Port Thunderbolt Dock for bus power to watch a DVD movie, listen to music CDs, create a backup disk, and install software.Another Wirecutter editor has experienced wake-from-sleep problems with a similar LG display, the 27GN950-B, using direct connections from a PC. Most 13-inch laptops charge at 45 or 60 watts, and even the most power-hungry MacBook Pro models max out at 96 watts, so regardless of which computer you’re using, you’re likely to get full-speed charging or very close to it. Port performance: Devices connected via the Thunderbolt 3 dock should perform almost as well as devices connected directly to the computer.