There are many brands on the market to choose from, but I still consider big brands when choosing. Miscellaneous products are often prone to malfunctions and damage, ranging from being damaged and unusable to potentially burning out access devices. Therefore, it is better to avoid them.

I used the multi-function type-c Docking station of Belkin above. This docking station uses a full metal shell, which can be said to be of good quality. In addition, the metal shell can also improve the heat dissipation capacity, and can quickly discharge the heat generated when accessing the equipment for high-speed transmission. As I used it, I found that the HDMI interface I provided no longer meets my multi screen collaboration needs, so I need to start a new expansion dock.

I started the 13 in 1 multi-functional lightning 3 professional expansion dock launched by Belkin, hereinafter referred to as Belkin Lightning 3 professional expansion dock. Its biggest feature is that it uses the lightning 3 interface, but also integrates the features of storage and expansion. Starting this expansion dock is not only to address the issue of insufficient LG gram laptop interfaces currently used, but also to prepare in advance for the already customized Mac mini and iMac.

The overall packaging design style of Belkin Thunderbolt 3 professional expansion dock is very simple, green+white design, and the front side also has the rendered image of this expansion dock and some function introductions. Belkin's Thunderbolt 3 expansion dock is officially certified by Intel, so the chips used also ensure transmission speed, stability and compatibility.

The contents are very simple: Thunderbolt 3 Docking station body, power line, 170W power adapter, Thunderbolt 3 data line, manual quality assurance card, etc. It can be seen that the size of the power adapter is basically the same as that of the expansion dock body, mainly due to its high-power power output. On the one hand, it can provide power to devices for data transmission and video input, and on the other hand, it can also be compatible with interfaces of this size.

The Belkin Thunderbolt 3 professional expansion dock is designed horizontally and horizontally, and its shape is also a relatively traditional flat style. The frosted metal shell can prevent fingerprints from being left when plugging and unplugging frequently. Belkin's design has always been very simple and beautiful, and the workmanship is also very fine, so many brands have been imitating it. Belkin's logo at the lower left corner of its fuselage is highly recognizable.

This expansion dock mainly adopts the interface layout design of the front and rear panels, which is also distributed based on the frequency of the main interface usage. The overall design is still very user-friendly and reasonable. The interfaces of the front panel are: usb-a 3.2 Gen2 (10Gbps), usb-c 3.2 Gen2, UHS II SD card reader, and 3.5mm audio interface.

The front USB - a and USB - c interfaces are mainly reserved for the access of USB flash drives, Portable storage device and other devices with high daily use frequency; The SD card reader also supports UHS - II class, which has great advantages in transmitting read and write, especially in terms of transmission performance required by photography creators; Although it is now the world of Bluetooth wireless headphones, traditional monitoring headphones and microphones still require a 3.5mm interface, so this docking station also takes into account the usage needs of video creators.

The interfaces of the rear panel are: 4 USB-A 3.2 Gen1 (5Gbps), RJ45 Gigabit Ethernet ports, DP 1.4 ports, 2 Thunderbolt 3 ports (including those marked with computer icons that support 85W power supply), and power interfaces.

Lightning interface, Technological convergence of PCI Express and DisplayPort two communication protocols. PCI Express is used for data transmission and can be easily extended to any type of device; DisplayPort is used for display, commonly known as DP, and can synchronously transmit 1080p or even 5K/8K videos and up to eight channels of audio. And both channels have their own separate channels during transmission, without any interference. The Thunderbolt interface has developed to the fourth generation, and currently the mainstream on the market is still Thunderbolt 3, which reaches a transmission speed of 40Gbps. Thunderbolt 3 adopts a USB type-C appearance, and unfamiliar friends can easily mistake the USB type-C interface for Thunderbolt 3 interface. Therefore, the simplest distinction is to see if there is a lightning symbol next to the interface for differentiation. Whether the type-c data cable supports Thunderbolt 3 is also determined by the presence of lightning markers.

The USB interface is very familiar to everyone, but there are still some subdivisions. USB 3.2 Gen1 is a renaming of USB 3.1 Gen1, while USB 3.2 Gen2 is a renaming of USB 3.1 Gen2. The difference between the two is the same as USB 3.1 Gen1 and USB 3.1 Gen2. Specifically, USB3.2 Gen2 has a higher transmission rate, smaller appearance, stronger power supply capacity, and more output types than Gen1.

The differences and advantages between Thunderbolt 3 and USB C interface: Firstly, Thunderbolt 3 can achieve a transmission rate of 40Gbps, which is four times the transfer rate of USB 3.2 Gen 2 in the docking station. Such a huge bandwidth can transmit higher unit data volumes, such as external displays and projectors, which can have better picture clarity and smoothness. Normal USB C to DP and HDMI can only output 4K@30Hz And Lightning 3 can output DP1.4 through switching 4K@120Hz perhaps 8K@30Hz Switching to HDMI 2.0 can output 4K@60Hz perhaps 2K@144Hz The difference between them is very obvious. For laptop users, the post rendering of videos is often limited by their own CPU and GPU processing capabilities. It is a great choice to increase the image processing performance of the laptop through the Thunderbolt 3 external graphics card docking station. The ordinary USB C interface cannot meet the bandwidth requirements of graphics cards, and its speed is too slow to undertake the task of transmitting data for external graphics cards.

The bandwidth of the USB-A 3.2 Gen2 and USB-C 3.2 Gen2 interfaces on the front panel is both 10Gbps, which naturally cannot be compared to the lightning 3-port transmission speed. However, they can also meet the transmission needs of traditional external devices in daily life. Use Lvlian M.2 NVMe Portable storage device box to install M.2 Solid-state drive to test the read/write performance of the interface. Specifically, the theoretical transmission speed of the official M.2-to-type-c3.1 Gen2 of the NVMe Portable storage device box used is 10Gbps, so its maximum read/write speed can only reach about 1000MB/s.

The USB a 3.2 Gen2 and USB c 3.2 Gen2 interfaces measured data using TxBench, and the read and write speeds were basically maintained at 977MB/s and 908MB/s, indicating that the bandwidth of the testing and official standards is consistent.

At present, mainstream SD memory cards mainly distinguish between UHS I/UHS II standards. The sticker on the front of the SD memory card will be labeled with I or II, or the gold finger area on the back of the SD memory card. UHS I only has one row of gold fingers on the back, while UHS II has two rows of gold fingers on the back, which is very easy to distinguish. The difference between UHS I and UHS II lies in the bus speed. UHS I has an interface speed of 104MB/s, while UHS II has an interface speed of 312MB/s, which is more than three times higher than UHS I.

Through ATTO Disk Benchmark testing, starting from 64KB files, the performance of the storage card has basically reached high-speed transmission, with a read speed of 209MB/s and a write speed of 229MB/s. Excluding the fluctuation of hardware differences in the evaluation, the UHS - Ⅱ SD card reader on the front panel basically meets the UHS - Ⅱ standard when reading and writing UHS - Ⅱ cards, as hardware testing on different platforms may vary.

Running points belong to running points, so how about daily use? Next, we will use a large file test of approximately 20.3GB to simulate the daily use of a card reader directly connecting to a computer to transmit data for evaluation.

When writing, it can be seen from the above figure that the transmission has maintained a stable write state of around 204MB/s from the beginning to the end, and there has been no cliff drop speed, indicating that the actual write speed of the file can be maintained at a relatively stable level.

During reading, it can also be seen from the figure above that the reading speed is maintained at about 221MB/s, and the speed is relatively stable at the beginning and end, without cliff drop, which also shows that the UHS - Ⅱ SD card reader on Belkin Lightning 3 professional expansion dock is very stable.

The four USB a 3.2 Gen1 interfaces on the rear panel have little advantage in speed transmission due to their bandwidth of only 5Gbps. However, they demonstrate strong functionality for desktop peripherals such as external keyboards, mice, and external sound cards. The humanized distribution design was also mentioned earlier. By designing these four interfaces on the rear panel, it can avoid obstacles to desktop activity space after device access, and also make the cable rear extension coordinated and not messy.

Many ultra-thin laptops have already removed their network ports and tend to prefer WiFi wireless networking. Of course, WiFi connections are naturally not constrained by wired connections, but sometimes the importance of network ports can be reflected, such as debugging NAS devices that require wired connections, or poor WiFi connection quality that requires wired connections in daily life scenarios, The practicality of the RJ45 Gigabit Ethernet port equipped on the rear panel is very prominent.

The Type-C interface equipped with laptops now allows for charging, while the Thunderbolt 3 interface can also be used for charging, and the performance is very good. Apple's laptop is the first product to use the type-c interface and the Thunderbolt 3 interface. Users who have used Apple's laptop with the Thunderbolt 3 interface should know how refreshing it is to use the Sigma Pegasi interface for charging before the development of fast charging technology.

The two Thunderbolt 3 interfaces on the rear panel support power supply, with the one with a computer icon supporting 85W and the other supporting 15W. The 85W lightning interface output voltage detection supports four fixed voltage levels, namely 5V/3.0A, 9V/3.0A, 15V/3.0A, and 20V/4.25A. The power supply efficiency of the 85W lightning interface is very high, which is enough to replace the 45W DC adapter that is standard for the LG gram laptop. With just one cable, it can be perfectly connected and support the charging of my laptop. At the same time, it can provide 45W fast charging for my LG Gram laptop without the need for an adapter, which is very convenient.

If you are a user of a MacBook laptop, it would be even better to pair it with this expansion dock, as the entire MacBook series is now available in the 85W gear range, making charging and expansion performance an excellent match.

Usually, I use a laptop to connect to a monitor in my daily photography and image editing, which enables multi screen collaborative assistance in image editing. Connect the Belkin Thunderbolt 3 professional expansion dock with the laptop by using Thunderbolt 3 data line, and then connect the DP data line with the display to carry out multi screen cooperation. Daily online work is also commonly used, displaying web pages with Word or other software to achieve multi-screen collaboration without the need to switch screens back and forth, which can maximize work efficiency. In the past, when making data statistical tables, I often encountered the need to switch back and forth between the data graph and Excel. Now, directly displaying different content between the monitor and laptop screens, inputting data for reporting can also improve efficiency.

The randomly equipped Thunderbolt 3 data cable is a full blooded version that supports 40Gbps full speed transmission and daisy chain function. When choosing Thunderbolt 3 data cable, it is necessary to pay attention to some longer cables, which may only transmit up to 20Gbps and cannot achieve daisy chain function.

The expansion of Lightning 3 interface can achieve 40Gbps bandwidth. At this time, the M.2 Solid-state drive can be added with a Lightning 3 interface Portable storage device box to make video streaming, directly edit RAW photos and 4K videos in the Portable storage device, and browse/edit/drag real-time 4K raw materials without jamming and HD video output to meet the needs of film and television editing users.

summarize

Before using the Belkin Thunderbolt 3 professional expansion dock, my office desktop will be filled with various cables, chargers, card readers and other external devices, making the activity space very narrow. After using this expansion dock, these issues have been improved, making the desktop cleaner and adding a lot of activity space. The ordinary portable expansion dock has also been used before. Compared with the Belkin Thunderbolt 3 professional expansion dock, we can find a more obvious problem: heating and power supply can not drive the demand for multi screen collaboration, let alone video streaming directly editing materials on Portable storage device. Ordinary portable docking stations take portability into consideration, so most ordinary portable docking stations will control the volume when designing, so that the motherboard has no cooling space, and the housing is prone to generate huge heat when using. However, for the desktop type expansion dock like Belkin Thunderbolt 3 Professional Expansion Dock, the difficulty of heat dissipation does not exist. In addition, it provides power supply, providing a high power of 85W, which can meet the current charging needs of laptops on the market, and can be connected and charged with just one wire. Don't worry, like a regular portable expansion dock, the power is small and cannot meet the needs of charging while using a laptop.

Of course, the value of using traditional portable expansion docks cannot be denied. In daily business trips, portable expansion docks are still very important. However, it is not necessary to consider the portability, just want a development dock that can be comprehensively handled at home or in the company. The desktop development dock of Belkin Thunderbolt 3 Professional Development Dock is worth considering. Is Belkin Thunderbolt 3 Professional Expansion Dock really worth it? For users like me who have many usage needs, it is a very valuable product: Thunderbolt 3 interface, support for multi device daisy chain series connection, high-power charging, high-speed and stable operation, support for UHS II SD card readers, gigabit network cable interfaces, and so on. It will also be very suitable for some professional creative people, such as photographers, Graphic designer, Record producer, etc. I hope this sharing can be helpful to my friends.