Sonnet Echo 13 Thunderbolt 5 dock evaluation: Merely one of the best proper now

Sonnet’s Echo 13 Thunderbolt 5 SSD Dock carves out a brand new tier in each value and efficiency, blowing away typical Thunderbolt 4 docks as a brand new tier of ultrapremium Thunderbolt 5 docking stations takes maintain.

I totally anticipate extra Thunderbolt 5 docking stations to be launched. Hopefully, their efficiency meets and even exceeds that of the Sonnet Echo 13, which ought to place among the many finest Thunderbolt docks that we suggest that you just purchase.

Sonnet’s dock is the second Thunderbolt 5 docking station I’ve examined, and the primary with an built-in SSD. The built-in SSD drives up the price considerably, however its efficiency sits effectively above a standard exterior SSD. (Intel’s unique reference design included an built-in SSD, my contacts say, so some producers adopted swimsuit.) It’s a good move, however, and one that may be a killer promoting level for this laptop computer docking station.

Sonnet’s dock measures about 8.5 inches lengthy and about 3.75 inches deep, and is barely thicker than an inch. There isn’t a choice to mount it vertically. The dock is made from plastic, with what seems to be venting on the highest and sides.

On the entrance of the dock is an influence button, with LEDs signaling energy and an lively Thunderbolt connection. The ability button must be held down for a second or two to show the dock on and off.

Sonnet clearly labeled each entrance ports: a 140W Thunderbolt 5 port that connects through a 31-inch Thunderbolt 5 cable, in addition to a second, 60W Thunderbolt 5 port. On the entrance is a 10Gbps USB-A port, a UHS-II SD and microSD card slot, and a headphone jack. On the rear of the dock are two extra Thunderbolt 5 ports, two extra 10Gbps USB-A ports (and a 5Gbps USB-A port, too), and an RJ45 connector for as much as 2.5Gbit Ethernet.

Mark Hachman / Foundry

Sadly, given the worth of the dock, there are not any devoted HDMI or DisplayPort ports, which can require you to buy further cables. However, my 4K, 160Hz check shows assist high-speed USB-C inputs, and when you’re available in the market for such a dock, yours may as effectively. Bear in mind, Thunderbolt 4’s base spec helps two 4K shows at 60Hz; Thunderbolt 5 helps three 4K, 144Hz shows. On this case, I merely reused present 40Gbps Thunderbolt 4 cables.

Two of my check shows reliably linked at 4K, 144Hz decision, however not three. (The dock despatched content material to all three 4K shows, at 144Hz — however simply two at a time.)

Given the problems I had with this similar laptop computer and a Kensington dock, I suspected that my check laptop computer is likely to be the problem. At press time, there have been nearly no Thunderbolt 5 laptops to check with; after session with Sonnet’s engineers and different sources, I’ve concluded that the laptop computer’s Thunderbolt 5 controller could also be cut up between the 2 ports. That received’t permit the laptop computer to show on three exterior 4K144 shows, even when the dock permits it. I’ll be updating my check laptop computer as quickly as I can.

Mark Hachman / Foundry

Be aware that whereas this dock is backwards-compatible with a Thunderbolt 4 laptop computer, you’ll obtain one of the best worth utilizing Thunderbolt 5 {hardware}. Sonnet notes that the slower Thunderbolt 4 I/O connection will throttle the SSD, which is a key promoting level for this dock.

Integrating an SSD presents advantages in addition to considerations

As somebody who usually leaves a USB key plugged into the dock to function a “sneakernet” of types, the concept of getting devoted storage in a dock appeals to me. Sonnet ships this dock with both a 1TB, 2TB, or 4TB SSD inside; my evaluation unit had a 2TB SSD.

You’d by no means realize it, although. My evaluation unit got here with the drive in an unformatted state, which means that it didn’t present up in File Explorer and primarily didn’t “exist” so far as my PC was involved. Sonnet’s unique documentation stated nothing about this, and even an up to date model that the corporate despatched electronically barely talked about it or what to do.

It’s not onerous to seek for the right way to remedy this drawback; utilizing Home windows’ personal search instrument and searching for “create and format onerous disk partitions” brings up the Disk Administration window beneath the Home windows Management Panel. That instrument exhibits the unformatted drive, which you’ll right-click on to format and make the drive usable. A Thunderbolt dock, nevertheless, is basically plug-and-play, and formatting an exterior SSD most decidedly shouldn’t be. I’d suggest that Sonnet both pre-format the drive or embrace a devoted, detailed tutorial on how to take action.

Mark Hachman / Foundry

The drive shouldn’t be encrypted by default, although it’s surrounded by the dock itself and isn’t designed to be user-accessible. Home windows does present drive encryption, referred to as BitLocker, although that’s a characteristic that’s unique to Home windows 10/11 Professional. (A Home windows 10/11 Dwelling machine can entry a BitLocker-encrypted exterior SSD through a devoted password that have to be typed in.) When you don’t encrypt the embedded SSD, that implies that there’s a drive that anybody can entry simply by docking their laptop computer. May somebody malicious plant spyware and adware or malware on it? Probably.

A conveyable SSD will also be picked up and carried with you, or secured elsewhere. This isn’t an argument for or in opposition to Sonnet’s dock! However it’s a checklist of issues to consider when you’re contemplating shopping for it.

Sonnet does declare that the built-in SSD, linked through Thunderbolt 5, might be sooner than an SSD linked to your PC through USB. And boy, is it ever.

Sonnet Echo 13 Thunderbolt 5 SSD Dock: Efficiency

My earlier expertise with the Kensington SD5000T5 EQ Thunderbolt 5 Triple 4K Docking Station, the primary TB5 dock I’d examined, was an enormous bust. On the time, I didn’t really feel assured in making an attempt to assign blame, since I used to be working with a brand new laptop computer, new cables, and a brand new dock. For this testing, I used the identical Maingear laptop computer (with a 14th-gen Core HX chip and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 GPU) that I did for that earlier check.

My expertise with the Sonnet dock was much better, and what I’d anticipate from the Thunderbolt 5 expertise.

Mark Hachman / Foundry

Stability-wise, the Echo 13 demonstrated a good quantity of what I name “show bounce.” Plugging a laptop computer into the dock — which was already linked to a pair of 4K, 144Hz shows — produced a scenario the place the shows flipped on and off and realigned themselves for just a few seconds. That’s not significantly uncommon.

After that, all the things settled down, all of the shows remained linked, and the efficiency was easy and fairly secure, as you’d anticipate. However there have been a number of instances that the dock struggled to gentle one show after resuming from sleep, and barely (as soon as each couple of days) one show disconnected for a second, resumed, and continued usually. (Powering the dock on and off solved this.) I believe that this was the laptop computer’s fault. The SSD remained accessible always.

The dock is rated to produce 140W of output energy to a laptop computer. Whereas my check laptop computer, Maingear’s ML-17, helps Thunderbolt 5, it may possibly’t settle for the 140W of energy the dock theoretically supplies. (Dell’s newest workstation-class laptops do, although I wouldn’t have one to check.) So whereas I can’t verify how a lot most energy the dock can present over the Thunderbolt cable, it did present 78W over the principle TB5 connection, and 56W (out of a rated 60W) through the opposite entrance Thunderbolt connection. That’s simply positive to fast-charge a smartphone.

(Be aware that the 85W handed through the Thunderbolt 5 cable won’t be ample to cost gaming laptops, corresponding to the primary few with Thunderbolt 5 connections. You’ll nonetheless have to cost these units through their devoted chargers.)

Throughout my streaming assessments, the place I stream a 4K, 60Hz video over the web through the Ethernet cable, all the things went completely — the dock dropped 6 out of 10,000 frames, which is negligible. I did discover a bit judder from concurrently enjoying a second video on a second show, which I usually didn’t do. However YouTube didn’t notice any dropped frames, so that may have been a problem with the GPU.

However the storage efficiency is revelatory. Sonnet describes the interior SSD’s pace as “ridiculous” and this is without doubt one of the few instances I’d agree with the advertising copy. Ludicrous pace, even!

I examine SSD speeds by connecting a normal SSD to the dock’s USB-C port and working PCMark 10’s exterior benchmark, which experiences the switch information in megabytes per second in addition to an summary rating. So far, the perfect scores I’ve ever seen are about 135MB/s, with a rating of 850 or so. Straight linked to the laptop computer, my check SSD delivers 160MB/s and a rating of 1,042.

Sonnet’s Echo 13 Thunderbolt 5 SSD Dock delivered information to the laptop computer at 279.8MB/s for a rating of 1,891. That’s a 75 % improve in pure throughput! Put one other means, when testing the drive utilizing CrystalDiskMark 8.0, sequential learn efficiency was 3,977MB/s, nearly double the learn efficiency of two,036MB/s from the Lexar SL600, an exterior 20Gbps SSD.

I additionally merely copy a folder of uncooked multimedia information from the SSD to the desktop. All of those assessments are pushing this information via the dock’s inside circuitry over the Thunderbolt 5 cable. About one of the best rating I’ve seen is 1 minute, 2 seconds, tacking on a further 4 extra seconds if I’m streaming video throughout the copy course of. Sonnet’s Echo 13 copied the information in 13.9 seconds, or 14.2 seconds whereas streaming. That’s a 78 % lower within the time taken by that check alone!

It’s value noting that I nonetheless linked my conventional check SSD to the dock’s USB-C port, and right here Sonnet’s dock wasn’t practically as spectacular: 106.2 MB/s, or a rating of 682. That’s decrease than the competitors, when you determined to not use the interior SSD.

All through all of that, the dock was as cool as the opposite facet of the pillow — fairly actually. It didn’t even heat to the contact, most likely as a result of it sounds prefer it has a quiet, lively fan cooling the dock.

Do you have to purchase the Sonnet Echo 13 Thunderbolt 5 SSD Dock?

The built-in SSD is a big price adder, and never essentially value it in case your storage wants are already served.

However, the efficiency of the dock’s SSD definitely makes up for it. A premium Thunderbolt dock plus the worth of a 2TB SSD works out to about $450, which isn’t an excessive amount of lower than what Sonnet is charging.

Typically, this dock did all the things I’ve requested it to do. I’m nonetheless fighting a check mattress that may adequately measure the ability a Thunderbolt 5 dock supplies, and I’m fairly certain that the dock’s incapacity to output to 3 4K/144 shows (versus simply two) often is the fault of the laptop computer, not the dock. We already know that not a lot Thunderbolt 5 {hardware} is on the market.

In any other case, I’m extraordinarily happy with the Sonnet Echo 13 Thunderbolt 5 SSD Dock and would suggest it even within the present state of the market and at its present value. Sonnet’s Echo 13 presents each superb efficiency and dependable stability, and units the bar for different ultrapremium Thunderbolt 5 docks to path in its wake. Others will comply with, definitely. However proper now, Sonnet’s dock is one of the best I’ve ever examined.