StarTech Thunderbolt 3 Dock

£403.19 FROM startech.com

One of the most compact docks on test, StarTech’s Thunderbolt 3 focuses heavily on displays and in particular, support for legacy displays.

Connecting to your Mac over a 40Gbps Thunderbolt 3 cable, it can supply 85W of power to your laptop and has just two USB 3.0 ports running at 5Gbps as well as Gigabit Ethernet. It’s able to drive two 4K displays at 60Hz via its two DisplayPort and single HDMI outputs, in any combination.

The dock also has a VGA output running at up to 1080p, the only dock on test that natively supports this older display connector.

This dock is better suited to someone who needs to hook up their Mac to slightly older displays that don’t have USB-C – indeed there’s no USB-C expansion port. It’s also at the more expensive end of the models on test, and is perhaps not an obvious choice for the average user who would prefer card readers and USB-C ports.