Kensington SD5000T5 EQ Thunderbolt 5 Triple 4K Docking Station review

Kensington SD5000T5 EQ: 30-second review

The changes between Thunderbolt 3 and 4 were minor, but the uplift to Thunderbolt 5 is significant, doubling the bandwidth for data transfers and tripling it for video.

With all that bandwidth on tap, a dock is necessary to make the most of it, and the Kensington SD5000T5 EQ Thunderbolt 5 Triple 4K Docking Station is the first of this generation to cross our path.

Being the bleeding edge usually comes with a premium, and the SD5000T5 EQ costs about $100 more than the best TB4 designs.

What you get for that investment is a significant but substantial dock with a milled aluminium exterior, minimalist styling and eleven ports, including the uplink.

The SD5000T5 boasts one of the biggest power deliveries to a laptop host, with 140W flowing over that connection, enabling even mobile workstations to charge and work without a problem.

Because this is Thunderbolt, there are three downlink ports that can cascade to other peripheral devices, like monitors and storage arrays.

However, to use a standard monitor with the SD5000T5 EQ, you will require TB to HDMI/DP adapters, as none come with the dock.

Overall, this device showcases what Thunderbolt 5 is likely to deliver, even if finding machines with this port on them is a genuine challenge.

Probably one of the best laptop docking stations I’ve reviewed, unless you only have USB4 to connect to it.

Kensington SD5000T5 EQ: Price and availability

• How much does it cost? $377/£400/€401
• When is it out? It is starting to be available now
• Where can you get it? Direct from Kensington or from an online retailer

Depending on where in the world you are, Kensington will either sell you the SD5000T5 directly or direct you to an appropriate online vendor.

One place you can get it directly is in the USA, but the Kensington price is an MSRP of $399.99, and you can get it for $376.99 from Amazon.com

While not sold directly in Europe, it can be found on the country-specific Amazon for £374.87/€400.90, which seems a marginally better deal than the US price.

The dock isn’t available through Chinese vendors, even if the box states it was made in Taiwan.

The alternative options for Thunderbolt 5 are remarkably thin on the ground. OWC has a TB5 Hub that’s less than $190, but it’s mostly a means to provide TB downlinks.

Cable Matters has a Thunderbolt 5 Docking Station that is just as nicely made. It has a similar port selection and costs $349.99 directly from the makers. This unit can also be mounted vertically with a provided foot, allowing for less desk space to be occupied.

The price of the Kensington SD5000T5 isn’t excessive, especially for those who trust this brand, but it is likely that we will see further docks, like the Cable Matters model, that undercut it on price.

Kensington SD5000T5 EQ: Specs

Kensington SD5000T5 EQ: Design

• Substantial
• Power button is on rear
• More a hub than a dock

This comment isn’t meant to be critical, but I find Kensington products to be over-engineered, and the SD5000T5 could easily be described as being that.

At nearly a kilogram in weight and over 26cm long, this is a hefty piece of hardware that I’d hate to have fall off a desk and land on my foot.

It’s made from a 100% PCR Aluminium extrusion that is capped by black plastic faces for the front and back. The styling for what it is consists of being smooth for 14cm of its length and then rippled for the final 8.6cm, covering the right-hand end.

It’s pleasant enough visually and has a little class, but it doesn’t distract from the box-like nature of this design.

The front face has a power LED, the uplink TB5 port, a downlink TB5, a single 10Gbps USB-A, the combo microphone and headphone port, and two SD card readers.

What’s missing is the power button, which, for no obvious good reason, Kensington decided to put on the back. Why the engineers did this is a complete mystery since there is obviously a place for it on the left side of the front port. Perhaps it was intended to go on the front, and then something internally didn’t work.

Whatever the reason, it was a stupid place to put it.

Along with that power button, on the rear are two more 10Gbps USB-A ports, a single 2.5GbE LAN port and two more TB5 downlinks.

For aficionados of Thunderbolt Docks, there was a definite choice made here to avoid dedicated ports, like HDMI or DP, instead of choosing to offer either USB-A ports or TB5 downlinks. That makes this more of a hub than an actual dock.

It also places emphasis on the buyer adding adapters for monitors if they want those, but it also provides maximum flexibility and simplicity in the design.

What’s also being avoided is offering any USB-C ports, but all the downlinks can double for this purpose.

What’s not obvious, because Kensington didn’t mark this information on the ports, is that the TB5 and USB-A ports on the front are not like the TB5 and USB-A on the rear.

The front-facing TB5, the one to the right of the uplink, is rated for 60W power delivery, and the USB-A on the front can offer 7.5W for charging. Both these are well-specified for charging phones and tablets. The TB5 on the rear is only rated to 15W, and the USB-A is only 4.5W, which is the standard power profile for these ports.

My only concern is that the LiteOn PSU provided with this dock has a maximum power delivery of 180W, and when you factor in the TB5 uplink being rated to 140W, all these numbers don’t add up. More on that later.

Overall, for the first TB5 dock, the SD5000T5 hasn’t strayed far from what Intel, who designed the Thunderbolt 5 architecture, defined as its optimal path. But depending on how you intend to use this technology, it comes across as a bit boring and short on surprises.

Kensington SD5000T5 EQ: Features

• Bandwidth enhanced
• Power management

In many parts of the world, people have woken up to the scenario where building more roads to reduce traffic jams encourages more cars and, ultimately, more congestion.

I’ve concluded that USB and Thunderbolt docks are in a similar bind.

Increasing the amount of bandwidth encourages more things to be attached, using up the extra bandwidth and returning the hardware to the oversubscribed side of the line.

To support all the potential modes mixing data with video, there must be at least 120Gbps of backbone bandwidth, but exclusively for the purposes of data transfer, that’s 80Gbps. That’s double what TB4 offered, and it easily allows each of the TB downlink ports to have 20Gbps, leaving another 10Gbps between the three USB ports, the 2.5GbE LAN port, and the SD card readers.

Except that’s not how this dock works, with it adjusting the bandwidth allocation in real-time to maximise the amount of bandwidth for each connected device.

This is a much better scenario than under TB3 and TB4. With the extra bandwidth, it’s easier to share an amount of bandwidth that avoids stalling any file transfer or video capture occurring on one port.

The snag, and it’s a huge one currently, is that making this all work requires Thunderbolt 5 and getting a system with this port is almost impossible at this time.

The SD5000T5 will work with TB4/USB4 and even USB-C (3.2 Gen 2), but functionality will be reduced due to the lower bandwidth.

Therefore, if you want to connect three 4K monitors at up to 144Hz, you must have a Thunderbolt 5 connection and Windows 11. Alternatively, you can also have dual 8K monitors at 60Hz.

If you only have Thunderbolt 4 or USB4, this dock only supports one 8K screen and two 4K at 60Hz, and USB-C Alt Mode supports a single 4K display at 60Hz.

Apple hardware owners can only get a maximum of dual 6K displays at 60Hz, and only for MacBook M1/M2/M3 Pro and Max chipsets. The base MacBooks only allow for single 4K displays on the M1 and M2, and only dual 5K and 6K on the M3, when the lid is closed.

Concerningly, Apple still hasn’t committed to Thunderbolt 5, which is ironic since this company championed it initially.

Does it make sense to buy this dock for those with TB4 or USB4 ports? That depends on how likely it is that the machine you are using will be replaced with one that supports TB5 in the near future. But currently, this hardware doesn’t offer anything to customers who are using older technology that couldn’t be bought for less money.

As I mentioned, there is also a slight wrinkle between the power the dock has to distribute and the collective power output on all the ports. While saying that it has a power output of 140W on one port, the power overheads of the dock hint that might be the entire power budget based on the 180W PSU that it is supplied.

Presumably, if you start charging a phone that can take 60W from the front-facing TB5 port, then the amount that can be used to charge the laptop will be reduced. There is a fairly sophisticated mechanism for managing the bandwidth demands; therefore, it would seem safe to assume that there is another parallel control for power management.

But, those who need the 140W charging for a mobile workstation need to be aware that hanging other devices from this dock that draw power will impact how rapidly a connected laptop is charged. Or, in extreme circumstances, if battery power declines while it is in use.

Considering how much power the ports could output (246.5W), this dock needed an even bigger PSU.

Kensington SD5000T5 EQ: Performance

• TB5 availability
• USB4 compatibility

Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t secure a machine with Thunderbolt 5 to test this hardware. However, I don’t have a TB5 SSD either, so without those two things, it is impossible to access the maximum speed that might be possible.

I instead explored how this dock might work with Thunderbolt 4 and USB4, even though some people think of these as the same thing. My testing revealed that these aren’t the same thing, and how you might get on with one isn’t the same as the other.

Initially, I tested using the GMKtec K7 Pro, an AMD Ryzen system with USB4. The results weren’t wonderful. Irrespective of the storage attached to the Dock, the performance was downgraded to USB 2.0 levels. It would see the connected USB drives, but transfer only at 40MB/s. These drives, like the new Crucial EX400U, can read at 4,000MB/s if directly connected to the same USB4 port.

Switching to an Asus Mini PC with Thunderbolt 4, I experienced the full performance of the Crucial EX400U (USB4) and an OWC Envoy FX (Thunderbolt).

Interestingly, I had similar issues with the Cable Matters dock, so I initially thought this might be an issue with the implementation of the USB4 in the GMKtec K7 Pro. However, the same problem manifested with a laptop supporting USB4, suggesting that the issue lies with the Intel chipset used in these TB5 docks. Hopefully, a firmware fix will resolve this issue since the dock is much more likely to be connected to USB4 port than it is to TB5.

The reason I mention this is to avoid assumptions being made about compatibility that might not turn out to be correct. In theory, this dock should work with any USB-C, TB3, TB4, USB4 or TB5-connected system, but how it works might not be as you anticipated.

I checked with Kensington to see if any new firmware had been released, but at the time of writing, none had been made public.

Even with a Thunderbolt 4 connection, the performance on this dock is excellent, and it’s probably even more impressive for the few who have Thunderbolt 5.

Unless you have an OWC Envoy Ultra that can transfer at 6,000MB/s or need triple 4K screens, the performance of the Thunderbolt 4 dock will be similar under most circumstances.

One last thought. If you must have the fastest Thunderbolt technology and invest in one of these and a TB5 SSD, then consider that transfers to the external storage are likely to be limited by the internal SSD of the laptop. If the laptop doesn’t have a high-end PCIe 4.0 NVMe, then it won’t be fast enough to maximise the performance of the TB5 SSD.

I doubt we’ll see many laptops with PCIe 5.0 drives because the power consumption and heat aren’t ideal for a battery-powered device.

Kensington SD5000T5 EQ: Final verdict

Testing the performance of this dock in all scenarios proved impossible. There are almost no computers around with TB5, and peripheral devices made to this standard are in their infancy.

It does work well with a Thunderbolt 4 connection, but it doesn’t offer anything for those taking that path that a cheaper TB4 dock wouldn’t provide. There are issues with USB4 that need to be addressed, and there is little point in using this hardware with USB-C.

Getting out ahead of the crowd was important for Kensington, but the SD5000T5 has probably jumped the gun by at least a year or more.

By the time TB5 becomes a more common peripheral, Kensington will probably have discontinued this model and replaced it with something else.

If you want this technology now, it’s reasonably affordable, but it’s also more of a fashion statement than something that can enhance productivity.

Kensington SD5000T5 EQ: Report card

Should you buy a Kensington SD5000T5 EQ?

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

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