Kensington EQ Pro Thunderbolt 5 Docking Station review: Spec’d and priced for pros  | amznusa.com

At a glance

Expert’s Rating

Pros

• Thunderbolt 5
• Integrated M.2 slot for an SSD
• Dedicated function keys
• Dock will charge without need for a laptop connection
• Unusually varied ports (optical, CompactFlash)
• Generally stable

Cons

• Some trouble connecting to displays after a restart/resume
• Extremely high price

Our Verdict

Kensington’s EQ Pro Thunderbolt 5 Docking Station (SD7100TS) aggressively chases the premium dock category, with unusual features that cater to a creative professional. The price tag will be a big roadblock, but those with a generous IT budget will be rewarded.

Price When Reviewed

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Best Pricing Today

Price When Reviewed

$449.99

Best Prices Today: Kensington SD7100T5 EQ Pro 19-in-1 Thunderbolt 5 Docking Station 

Editor’s Note: At press time, Kensington had only begun shipping the version of this dock designed for the Apple Mac. The Amazon link above points at that version, while the Kensington shopping link above does not yet have availability. You should be able to use the “Mac” version of this dock referenced above by just downloading the Windows software package.

Kensington’s EQ Pro Thunderbolt 5 Docking Station, also known as the SD7100TS, is a monster of a dock, whose $450 price is roughly double what some manufacturers charge for the current generation of Thunderbolt 4 docks. It’s a hefty investment, but this 19-in-1 docking station also offers features that rival laptop docking stations simply do not.

It’s worth noting, though, that this is a Thunderbolt 5 dock, a technology we’ve been talking about since 2023. However, the 2026 laptop platforms for all three PC processor makers, including Intel’s Panther Lake, will not support Thunderbolt 5 except via a more expensive discrete chip. That likely makes Thunderbolt 5 a niche technology.

(Yes, you can future-proof your desk with this dock. But if you want to save in the short term, you might want to look elsewhere in our list of the best laptop docking stations.)

With that said, Kensington still offers numerous selling points: a CompactFlash slot, something that photographers might appreciate; a dedicated (and empty) M.2 slot to insert an SSD; an optical audio input; and two dedicated hot keys on the top of the dock which can be used for multiple purposes. Kensington sells a version of this dock for Macs for the same price; there, those keys are used for kicking off a dedicated photo backup.

Otherwise, the dock includes three Thunderbolt 5 ports for connecting displays. (Note that you’ll need to invest a bit more in display cables/adapters if your displays lack USB-C or Thunderbolt input, about $18 or so. to connect to a 4K display at 60Hz, or $24 for a 4K240 gaming display.) The dock includes four 10Gbps USB-A ports and two 10Gbps USB-C ports, with a USB-C port capable of outputting 30W for charging a phone. Some newer phones require 40W or more to fast-charge, however.

However, this dock has a “KonstantCharge” feature which allows devices to be charged even when the dock isn’t connected to a laptop, which is rather neat. It works, too, on all the ports I tried. (The 30W charging port delivered 28.6 watts under load, and the other USB-C port provided about 6 watts. The (upstream) Thunderbolt 5 port delivered 13.6W, while the downstream Thunderbolt 5 port to the laptop provided a maximum of 85 watts of power. (We’ll revisit this, below.)

Foundry / Mark Hachman

The dock also includes a 2.5Gbps Ethernet port, as well as some oddities: Instead of a single 3.5mm mic/headphone jack, the dock has separate mic, speaker, and headphone I/O ports, plus an optical connection! The latter can be used to pass uncompressed audio to some high-end audio systems. Digital photographers may also benefit from the inclusion of a CompactFlash card slot, something that I haven’t seen for years, in addition to the miniSD and SD card slots.

I honestly didn’t expect an optical connection, so I was totally unable to test that. All of the other audio connections worked as expected.

The two hotkeys add an additional layer of functionality, although they’re not really necessary. By default, they’re configured to lock your PC and to trigger the Copilot app, although my review unit still included the “photos” icon that I believe ships with the Mac version. There’s a small catch: You’ll need to have the Kensington Konnect software installed for the buttons to work at all, and Kensington also recommends that you install its Dockworks software too for the best connectivity. Everything else, however, works right out of the box.

A small white LED on the dock lights while the hot key is active.

I honestly don’t see a whole lot of use for the hotkeys, since you’ll probably have already memorized the keyboard shortcuts instead. But they’re just another option, just like a laptop touchpad supplements a mouse.

The entire dock connects to the laptop via a one-meter cable. This dock supports Thunderbolt 5’s capability to deliver 140W of power, but I haven’t found a laptop equipped with Thunderbolt 5 that accepts that level of power. I detected about 80W of power being passed between the dock to my test laptop, about the same as every other Thunderbolt 5 dock I’ve tested.

Foundry / Mark Hachman

Kensington implemented an interesting way to add an M.2 SSD. Perhaps because of its institutional focus on safety (the dock includes a pair of Kensington lock slots, after all), the SSD compartment is secured by a screw on one side of the dock itself. Only then can the compartment be detached from the bottom of the dock and the M.2 SSD screw removed before it can all be put back together. (Fortunately, the dock screw appears to be optional, as the M.2 compartment seems like it’s securely clipped in.) Make sure you power off the dock, disconnect it, and then add the SSD.

I much preferred the way Razer implemented the SSD installation inside the Razer Thunderbolt 5 Dock Chroma…though the SSD ended up getting stuck inside it and required some force to dislodge it.

The dock itself is made from partially recycled aluminum and never became warm enough to worry about. Some docks have included an active fan for cooling purposes, but not this one.

Foundry / Mark Hachman

Kensington EQ Pro Thunderbolt 5 Docking Station (SD7100TS) performance

Laptops equipped with Thunderbolt 5 ports are still somewhat rare, so finding a proper test bed has been a consistent challenge. My recent reviews have used a Razer Blade 18, on loan from Razer.

My recent review of Razer’s Thunderbolt 5 Dock Chroma simply wouldn’t deliver power while gaming, a black mark against it. Kensington’s SD7100TS dock provided a steady 80 to 85 watts of power while under normal load. On one occasion, Kensington’s dock also failed to deliver power while gaming, while connected to Blade 18’s Thunderbolt 5 port, but generally delivered consistent power to the laptop’s Thunderbolt 5 port as well as the separate Thunderbolt 4 port. That makes me think that the Blade laptop might still have a lingering issue that needs to be addressed.

Kensington’s dock is rated to deliver up to 140W to a connected laptop, which must support the USB-C PD 3.1 EPR standard to accept that much power. It’s not clear whether Razer’s Blade 18 does so, which means that I wasn’t able to test this capability thoroughly. It’s important, however, because some laptops will demand that much power — or more — while gaming.

Kensington’s dock did deliver power consistently to other laptops I tested, however, all of which had Thunderbolt 4 ports.

From a stability standpoint, the dock was slightly disappointing. Kensington recommends that you install its Dockworks software, which allows for a few features, like automatic switching to Wi-Fi when the dock and an Ethernet connection are switched off. On one occasion, the dock had trouble connecting to a second display, only doing so after restarting the PC, and then waiting some time. Kensington’s docks are usually quite stable, and aside from the aforementioned issue, that was true. I tested the SD7100TS for a period of several days, and the dock was absolutely stable during normal use. It was just after resuming or restarting that I noticed these issues.

From a performance standpoint, Kensington’s dock was slightly slower than other Thunderbolt 5 docks I’ve tested: The Sonnet Echo 13 transferred data from our test SSD at about 436MB/s, while the Plugable TBT-UDT3 was about the same. Kensington’s drive transferred data at 398MB/s, or 9 percent slower. All of these tests were conducted using UL’s PCMark 10 benchmark, as per my docking station testing methodology. Kensington’s dock also streamed a pair of 4K streams without any issue at all. When I reran the SSD data transfer test, performance dropped to 378MB/s, a bit more than usual.

Foundry / Mark Hachman

I then copied multiple gigabytes of data from a folder on my desktop to the SSD attached to the dock. The dock performed normally, taking about 16 seconds. (Sonnet’s dock is the fastest here, at about 14 seconds.) While streaming, that dropped to 17.3 seconds. Obviously, that difference would enlarge the more data you transferred at a time.

Like the Chroma, the Kensington EQ Pro Thunderbolt 5 Docking Station includes an M.2 slot, into which you can insert an SSD. My tests found that that SSD inside Kensington’s dock performed essentially the same as the Razer Thunderbolt Dock Chroma, another Thunderbolt 5 dock with an M.2. SSD slot, when performing a folder copy: 16.8 seconds by itself, and 17.5 seconds while streaming 4K video. On the PCMark storage test, Kensington’s dock performed about the same: 426MB/s, up from 423MB/s for Razer’s dock, and 408MB/s while streaming versus 415MB/s for Razer.

Should you buy the Kensington EQ Pro Thunderbolt 5 Docking Station (SD7100TS)?

Well, sure. That’s what second mortgages are for.

Seriously, this dock is substantially more than the $250 or so I expect as the price of a Thunderbolt 4 dock. I get it — Thunderbolt 5’s component costs are higher than Thunderbolt 4, and premium features like the optical connection, CompactFlash slot, and the M.2 SSD repository cost more to engineer in.

Truly, though, this dock caters to the high-end creative professional: The CompactFlash slot for the photography hobby on the side; the high-end optical connection for a set of studio speakers on the desk; the power of Thunderbolt 5 alongside the hidden M.2 slot.

For me, this dock is too expensive to recommend to the average user. But as a premium dock aimed at a professional, certainly. Just make sure to put it on the expense account.