Kensington SD5000T5 Thunderbolt 5 Dock review: 140W charging & 60W TB5 port

Price When Reviewed

$299.99

Best Prices Today: Kensington SD5000T5 EQ Thunderbolt 5 Triple 4K Docking Station

Is the SD5000T5 worth it for Mac users?

This simpler Kensington EQ dock joins the company’s flagship docking station, the EQ Pro Thunderbolt 5 Dock for MacBook (SD7100TS), as an entry-level solution for Macs sporting the latest and fastest 80/120Gbps connectivity standard.

The $449/£329 EQ Pro has 19 ports and a dedicated SSD slot for you to add extra storage, plus special Mac hot keys for easy iPhone photo backup and a Focus Mode. The more affordable $299/£299 EQ Thunderbolt 5 Triple 4K Docking Station (SD5000TS) has 11 ports but might offer all you need for your speedy desktop setup.

What ports do you actually get (and what’s missing)?

• One upstream Thunderbolt 5 port (80Gbps, 140W)
• Two downstream Thunderbolt 5 ports (80Gbps, 15W)
• One downstream Thunderbolt 5 port (80Gbps, 60W)
• One USB-A port (10Gbps, 7.5W)
• Two USB-A ports (10Gbps, 4.5W)
• Ethernet (2.5Gb)
• UHS-II SD card reader (312MBps)
• UHS-II microSD card reader (312MBps)
• One 3.5mm combo audio In/Out jack (front)
• 180W power supply

Thunderbolt 5 (TB5) is backwards compatible with Thunderbolt 4 and 3, so even if your Mac isn’t yet built for TB5, you can rest assured that it will work with earlier Thunderbolt versions and be ready for your eventual TB5 Mac upgrade.

Thunderbolt 5 Macs get 80Gbps data-transfer rates and up to 120Gbps in Bandwidth Boost mode for top-end video demands.

One TB5 port is “upstream”, meaning it connects to your Mac. The other three are “downstream” for connecting other devices such as monitors and storage drives.

Kensington has, in my mind, wisely decided against swapping one of the potential Thunderbolt 5 ports for a dedicated video port such as HDMI or DisplayPort. Several top dock makers think they know best when giving you a DisplayPort in place of the third downstream Thunderbolt port—reasoning that the user will almost certainly use the dock to connect to at least one external display and as all good monitors have a DisplayPort connection then why not have the same on the dock.

On a dock with extra USB-C ports, a video-only port might make sense, but on a dock with only 11 ports and no extra USB-C on top of the Thunderbolt ports the video-only port could end up unused and a wasted opportunity to replace it with another flexible Thunderbolt port. That’s because not all good monitors have a DisplayPort connection on their back. The Apple Studio Display, to take a high-profile example, has four Thunderbolt ports and no DisplayPort. BenQ’s excellent MA range of monitors each has dual HDMI ports and no DisplayPort.

If the dock maker had stuck with the chipset’s available three downstream Thunderbolt ports, rather than switch one for a DisplayPort, the Studio Display or BenQ user would have an extra high-speed port to play with rather than a wasted DisplayPort. Ugreen recently made this error on its Maxidok 10-in-1 Thunderbolt 5 Docking Station—and as you can read in our review, we didn’t like that decision at all.

So, breathe a sigh of relief that Kensington offers you the full roster of Thunderbolt 5 ports for you to decide how to use. If you must connect via DisplayPort, then simply buy a USB-C to DisplayPort adapter cable. If not, you have an extra Thunderbolt port that the poor Ugreen user does not.

How good is the 60W Thunderbolt 5 port in practice?

As an even greater bonus the Kensington has bestowed upon its extra downstream Thunderbolt 5 port the ability to charge a connected device at 60W. The upstream Thunderbolt 5 port can deliver 140W to a connected laptop—enough to fast-charge Apple’s top-end 16-inch MacBook Pro. The other two TB5 ports each supports 15W of power output as well as their 80/120Gbps data prowess.

There are three legacy USB-A ports (at a speedy 10Gbps), which I think is overkill for the old standard, but dock makers continue to heap USB-A on us. The front-facing USB-A port can charge at 7.5W, with the two at the back a little weaker at 4.5W output.

Also at the front of the dock are two card readers: both the SD and MicroSD readers works at the fast 312MBps UHS-II standard, which is faster than Apple’s 250MBps SDXC card reader on its Pro MacBooks.

What are the main drawbacks?

• Front-facing upstream TB5 port concern
• Front-facing 60W port clutter concern
• Limited number of ports (11 total)
• 180W power supply limitation (you can pull the key point from the “Power” section or summarise it here)

Design: Is the design practical for everyday use?

Before we delve deeper into the technical detail, now would be a good time to discuss the dock’s design. Up to this point I have been a fan of the SD5000TS but I have a couple of grumbles on the port layout.

Two of the Thunderbolt ports are situated on the front of the dock, including the upstream port that connects to the Mac. If you are frequently connecting and disconnecting your Mac from the docking station—say in a hot-desking office—having the upstream port on the front might make sense if you have to make a quick dash or connect in 0.5 seconds.

However, I would prefer to have all the Thunderbolt ports at the back, keeping trailing cables neatly out of the way. Having the upstream port at the front used to be all the rage but recently it has been pushed out of sight to the rear panel. It’s not a deal-breaker and you may love the positioning.

The 60W TB5 port is the other Thunderbolt port at the front. I can see why this might be handy—making it easy to locate when charging other devices—but to reduce cable clutter I’d still stick it at the back.

The card readers are certainly where they should be, at the front, and having one of the USB-A ports there is also sensible for memory sticks, for example, as is the audio port.

Aside from the port layout the dock is a good-looking silvery gray box with some ridges on one side of the top. The front and rear and darker in black. It measures 8.9 x 3.8 x 1.6 inches (226 x 97 x 40mm) and weighs 2.15lbs (nearly 1kg).

Network: Is 2.5Gb Ethernet fast enough for your setup?

With many office networks moving to faster speeds, the 2.5Gb Ethernet will be appreciated—2.5 times faster than the standard 1Gb Gigabit Ethernet that has been the mainstay of docking stations until recently.

2.5GbE is backwards compatible with Gigabit Ethernet so—like Thunderbolt 5—is a good way of future-proofing your system even if you don’t yet work with the faster network standard.

The very top docking stations—such as the CalDigit TS5 Plus and iVanky FusionDock Ultra—boast 10GbE. USB-C adapters can be purchased if you later need that fastest of networking standards.

Power: Does it deliver enough power for a full setup?

Like Kensington’s flagship EQ Pro Thunderbolt 5 dock, the simpler EQ feels a little under-powered with its max 180W power supply. Both can supply up to 140W (PD 3.1) to a connected laptop so there’s not much left to play with if your other devices all require power.

There’s a highly useful 60W Thunderbolt 5 port at the front that you can use to fast charge an iPhone or iPad or hook up a second MacBook for recharging. That 180W power supply will therefore feel the pinch at full pelt.

The other two downstream Thunderbolt ports are rated at 15W, with the two back-mounted USB-A ports offering just 4.5W and the one at the front 7.5W.

The upstream power delivery of 140W is as capable as any other Thunderbolt 5 dock—enough to fast-charge the top-end 16-inch MacBook Pro.

Storage: What storage options do you get?

While the top-end Kensington EQ Pro featured an SSD slot that allowed you to add up to 8TB of fast storage, the EQ has just the two front-facing card readers.

These are a great way of adding affordable and super-portable storage, with 1TB cards selling for around $200 at the time of writing. Given the at-time-of-purchase cost of internal storage charged by Apple, you can flexibly add your own quite cheaply.

In addition to its UHS-II SD/MicroSD card reader slots, the EQ Pro featured a CompactFlash card slot for digital photographers. This is quite niche and not missed on the entry-level TB5 EQ.

Displays: How many displays can it run on a Mac?

The Kensington SD5000T5 EQ calls itself a “Triple 4K Docking Station” but this is true only for Windows computers (using Thunderbolt 5) or Macs with an M5 Pro or M5 Max chip.

While Thunderbolt 4 docks continue to be capped at two external displays on the Mac, the latest top-end M5 Pro and M5 Max chips support up to three external displays with a Thunderbolt 5 dock. The M5 Max can handle four but as there aren’t enough ports on the SD3000T5 to hang so many monitors off, you’ll need to daisy-chain the fourth screen from the third.

Lesser Mac processors—right up to the base M5 and speedy M4 Pro/Max—are stuck at a limit of two external displays due to Apple’s lack of support for Multi-Stream Transport (MST) on macOS. You can get round this limitation by employing a DisplayLink dock but the SD5000TS is not one of those. At the time of writing there were no Thunderbolt 5 DisplayLink docks.

Two monitors are plenty for most users, however. A Mac with an M1/M2/M3/M4 Pro or Max chip can support two 6K displays at 60Hz. Even a base M4 Mac can support 2x 6K/60Hz but only if the Mac has Thunderbolt 5.

Any of the M4 chip Macs will support a single 8K display at 60Hz, while M1/M2/M3 Pro or Max Macs can run a single 6K/60Hz monitor.

A base M3 MacBooks can run up to two displays (1x 6K and 1x 6K) with its lid closed. Base M1/M2 Macs are limited to one 4K/60Hz display, but these Macs are probably not the target for a Thunderbolt 5 dock unless you are buying for the future.

Price

The Kensington SD5000T5 EQ Thunderbolt 5 Docking Station is priced at $299.99 or £299.99, which is the expected cost for an entry-level Thunderbolt 5 dock.

Other options worth considering are the similarly priced Plugable Thunderbolt 5 Docking Station (11 ports), WAVLINK Thunderbolt 5 Dock (12 ports) and OWC Thunderbolt 5 Dock (11 ports). There’s little between these docks. The WAVLINK has an extra USB-A port and a 230W power supply. But the Kensington’s 60W TB5 port might swing it if your charging needs require it.

You’ll need to find at least an extra hundred bucks to jump up a level: the CalDigit TS5 has 15 ports but lacks a downstream port with the charging power of the Kensington.

Read our reviews of the best Thunderbolt 5 docks for Mac for the full range available.

Should you buy Kensington EQ Thunderbolt 5 Dock?

The Kensington SD5000T5 is a great entry-level Thunderbolt 5 dock with enough top-rated ports for most users, including three downstream Thunderbolt 5 (one rated at a useful 60W), that puts it at the front of the line at this price point.