Did Kensington just make a Surface-style MacBook Dock?
USB Type C is finally going mainstream, with many new and upcoming devices supporting the standard, as well as a growing list of accessories designed to expand the advanced port, especially on devices with limited number of ports, like the 12 inch MacBook Retina.
The Kensington SD1500 is a recently unveiled USB-C mobile dock designed for this very purpose. The accessory’s port array includes Ethernet, USB 3.0, VGA and HDMI, with support for 4K displays, which is what makes this dock noteworthy.
The SD1500 is clearly a presentation tool, as the one feature that is missing is pass-through power. By this token, this dock is most definitely not meant to be used on a daily basis, as a permanent fixture on your 12 inch MacBook Retina, unless it connects to an additional Y-cable, for an additional cost, added to the $89.99 price tag of this device.
The presence of a VGA port is another indication that Kensington is targeting primarily business customers and schools, as those are environments in which the VGA port may still be available.
According to tests conducted by MacWorld, the device’s VGA, HDMI and USB 3.0 ports perform rather well during benchmark, however some drivers were needed to perform some Ethernet functions in sleep mode.
While the look and functionality of this accessory might be similar to the Surface Dock, the lack of pass-through power makes this device fit a very narrow audience, specifically presenters for whom running a MacBook on battery power alone, driving a 4K display is quite enough for presentations no longer than 2-3 hours.
From a consumer’s point of view, this accessory falls considerably short of features that are common in other similar accessories, such as a similarly priced Apple USB-C Digital AVB Multiport adapter, which expands the MacBook’s USB Type-C port with an additional USB 3.0, an HDMI port, as well as pass-through USB-C, although video support, as stated from Apple, goes as far as UHD(3840x2160).
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