Belkin’s Thunderbolt Express Dock hit the market months after its original target release date in September 2012. Beset by delays, the company started accepting preorders in February this year with the intention of making the device available within the first quarter. But Belkin missed the new target date again, though this time only by a bit, and only officially announced Express Dock’s launch yesterday, April 30.
The Express Dock connects to PCs with Thunderbolt ports and expands a computer’s connectivity, giving you access to high-speed data transfers between devices, including displays. Connecting one dock to your computer will add two Thunderbolt ports (one upstream, one downstream that you can use to daisy-chain up to five Thunderbolt devices), three USB 3.0 ports, one FireWire 800 port, one Gigabit Ethernet port, and one 3.5mm audio-in and one 3.5mm audio-out port. The company originally planned to include an eSata connection, but dropped it in February in favor of a second Thunderbolt port.
You can get a Thunderbolt Express Dock right now from Belkin’s website or from retailers for $300. However, it doesn’t come with its own Thunderbolt cables, so you’ll have to pony up $30 per half a meter of Thunderbolt cable if you want to use the dock as something other than for its Ethernet and USB connections.
