- In this video, I'm going to show you my favorite USB-C Dock
for MacBooks and also a PC laptops,
and that is the CalDigit TS3 Plus.
Now I did a ton of research
before purchasing this Dock with my own money I might add.
So this is not a biased review.
And in my opinion, it is one of the best.
If not the best Dock you can get for your money right now
plus it even makes certain external drives
perform faster when they're plugged
into the Dock versus directly into your laptop.
More on that later, by the way
if any companies are watching this video
and you send me a Dock without an SD Card Reader
on the front, this is what's going to happen to it.
(soft bang)
So to get started,
why is having a good quality Dock important?
Well, there are a couple of reasons.
Firstly, it makes it super easy to connect your MacBook
or Windows laptop to everything you need
with just one single USB-C cable.
This will provide everything from Ethernet, more USB ports
and up to 87 Watts of charging among other things.
You also have the option to connect.
Dual extended 4K 60 Hertz monitors,
or a single 5K 60 Hertz monitor.
This is really helpful
if you're constantly on the go with your laptop,
but still need to use it on a desk set up at home or at work
what's more the CalDigit TS3 Plus
is Thunderbolt 3 compatible.
So you'll get those juicy Thunderbolt speeds
and increased bandwidth for your devices.
Secondly, a good quality Dock will easily last years.
So it's a buy once cry once kind of deal.
I always recommend paying a little bit extra
for Hubs and Docks,
especially ones that provide charging to your laptop.
This is especially important considering
there are some rumors out there that some Docks
and hubs are killing M1 MacBooks,
check out my video in the top right corner
for more info on that.
Thirdly, a Hub or Dock is almost essential
in this day and age of disappearing ports.
You can bash Apple all you want
for reducing their ports on the MacBooks.
But a lot of Windows laptops
are also slowly reducing their port selection.
Although admittedly, not as bad as Apple.
Let's begin by unboxing the TS3 Plus
out of its packaging.
And also take a look at the port selection.
Okay, so here we have the CalDigit TS3 Plus in the box.
So you can see obviously there it is Thunderbolt compatible
just looking on the back and see some of the ports there.
So as I said before,
an extremely impressive number of ports,
I really don't think this is missing anything
except a HDMI port, but we'll touch on that later.
So let's get it out of the box.
So we get some stickers and some documentation,
also you get some kind of of rubber strips there.
I'm not sure what they are.
You get a power cable.
You also get...
A USB-C to USB-C cable as well.
And this is the power brick, which is absolutely huge.
But like I said before,
this is actually going to replace
the power brick for the actual MacBook.
So maybe not quite a negative, even though it is quite big.
You have a quick-start guide as well.
I don't really need that.
And then finally down the bottom
we have the actual Dock itself.
So it is relatively small.
It feels quite solid though.
So let's get it out of this plastic,
and they go, so the exterior is kind of like a metal
doesn't really feel fully metal,
feels like kind of plastic-y,
you got a rubber bottom there.
Everything else is metal, but you can see there.
It's really not that big at all.
So let's have a closer look at this and do some testing.
Okay, so let's check out the ports on this thing.
So starting at the front
we have obviously a SD Card Reader.
We've also got an audio Jack-in, a mic-Jack,
we've got a USB-C, 5 gigabit per second port
and also USB-A 5 gigabit per second port,
on the sides there's nothing except on the bottom
there's kind of this rubbery finish
that you use to put on the desk that way
it means it won't slip, moving onto the back.
Starting from the top left hand
we've got a Ethernet, RJ 45 Ethernet.
We've also got the DC-in that's for the power.
We've got a digital audio-out.
That's going to be for speakers or audio devices.
Display port, it's a full-size display port,
USB 10 gigabit per second port,
USB-C I should mention. Thunderbolt, Thunderbolt.
That's where you connect to your computer.
And also we've got four USB five gigabit per second port.
So plenty of ports on the back.
I've even tried to max this thing out.
I haven't really been able to yet in terms of ports.
So you're probably not going to be missing anything
on the CalDigit TS3 Plus.
Now before you ask, know this Dock will not allow you to use
two screens with M1 MacBook Air or MacBook Pro.
Even if you use USB-C and a separate display port connection
for every other computer, it works fine,
but for M1 laptops currently there is still that limitation
you can get around this however if you really wanted to
by buying a display link based Docking system instead.
So now let's talk speed.
I tested each of the ports on the CalDigit TS3 Plus
and have to say I was pretty happy with the speeds.
I plugged different kinds of storage devices in,
and made sure to use the correct port for each device.
I even tested a custom super-fast MVME SSD I made myself
check out the video
in the top right-hand corner to learn how I made it.
Now, as you can see,
when external drives are plugged into the TS3 Plus,
rather than directly into the M1 MacBook Pro
I'm using for this test
the read and write speeds are actually better.
The SD Card is of course the same as the MacBook
doesn't have an SD Card slot.
And in terms of transfer speeds
they remained pretty consistent
throughout my testing using the same gigabyte folder.
I will mention that Thunderbolt 3 devices
can be a little strange though.
They either work slightly faster
or slightly slower and connected to the CalDigit Dock.
But this is almost certainly due to the M1 hardware
and the actual Thunderbolt device I was testing.
So I'll be doing some further testing
on this later in a separate video.
(click)
One thing I didn't mention is that the TS3 Plus
comes with two small Silicon rubber strips
that you can attach to the side of the Dock.
This will allow you to lay the Dock flat if you prefer.
I personally like this method more than having it upright.
So how would you actually use this Dock in real life?
Well, let's jump back into the studio
and I'll show you how I have mine set up.
Okay, so this is my typical setup.
This is how I would say, I edit videos or work at an office.
In fact, I did actually work
in my previous job just like this for a couple of years
and it is a very comfortable setup to have.
So first things first, obviously we need a laptop.
So I have a base model 2021 MacBook Pro here.
I'm just going to plug it in to the CalDigit Dock.
So just a single cable and I'll do a little B roll shot
of just how much I've got plugged into the back.
So I've got obviously the 4K monitor.
I've got an NVME SSD drive.
I've also got Ethernet, a keyboard,
a mechanical keyboard here, which has just a razor keyboard
which is actually really cool
because it just connects using a USB-C cable.
So if I ever want to take this off,
and use it on another computer, I definitely can.
I just need to unplug it here using any kind of USB-C cable
and then when I want to come back and attach it
I just plug it back in, like so, and I'm good to go.
I am also using a wireless mouse.
Now, all the links to all of this stuff
is going to be in the description.
So check it out if you are interested.
Now, the really cool thing about this Dock
as I've explained before
is, it does have a nice port selection at the back
but also at the front
you've got pretty much everything you're ever going to need.
So for me, personally
what I do is I actually leave a cable plugged into the back
either a Thunderbolt cable,
or some kind of USB-C, USB 3.2 cable
plugged into the 10 gigabit per second port at the back.
And I'll use a long USB-C cable like this,
or Thunderbolt cable, depending what I need.
And that allows me to simply just
plug in whatever accessories I need to here
and then all I need to do is plug it in, set it down there
and it's connected to my Mac without any issues.
Now, the other cool thing is if I have anything extra
such as this drive from my camera
this is for the Ninja Atomos Five external recorder.
All I need to do is actually just plug this into the front,
like so
and you'll be able to see it pop up in just a second,
here it is,
and that was very, very quick
and I can now start using this particular drive,
and obviously once I'm done, I can inject it, take it out,
and I'm good to go.
Now, I wouldn't be surprised if you are going to be using
any more ports than what I have at the moment
but the good news is you've still got plenty of connectivity
left on the Dock itself
and you've also got a spare Thunderbolt port on the Mac.
So if you do have some kind of Thunderbolt 3
or Thunderbolt 4 enclosure or external drive
you can still plug that directly into the Mac
and get the full 100% speeds without any issues.
And of course if you don't need to have your laptop open
like this you can just shut the lid
and you can use it like this.
You can also use one of the laptop stands
and have your laptop standing up externally like that
lengthwise, I don't personally use that
because I like to have my laptop open
just because it works as a second screen.
And sometimes also I like to just rest my hand here
and use the track pad instead of the mouse.
So what are drawbacks of this Dock,
well, there are two main negatives for me.
Number one, is of course the price at 250 U.S. dollars.
It's not cheap, especially when you have Hubs
like the Anchor USB-C eight in one,
which I reviewed in a previous review
and gave it a thumbs up.
However, for like permanent desk set up,
I would definitely go with the CalDigit
as it's extremely sturdy and well-made.
So I would trust it to be connected to my devices 24-seven
and be able to handle a large amount of usage and workload.
The second negative is that you need the power brick
for the Dock to work at all.
Obviously, I tried to get the TS3 plus
working with my Windows desktop PC,
but even just trying to plug in an SD Card
and transferring some photos wasn't possible.
The Dock needs its own power source to do anything at all
which isn't a huge issue
because this Dock is of course primarily for laptop users
anyway, so all in all the CalDigit TS3 Plus,
gets the Created Labs seal of approval.
It's going to be a staple on my desk from now on
and perhaps yours too.
I'll leave a link in the description with the best price
on Amazon, but apart from that, thank you guys for watching,
and I'll catch you in the next one.