UGREEN Revodock Maxidok 17-in-1 Thunderbolt 5 Docking Station Review

UGREEN have launched a new series of Thunderbolt 5 compatible devices and have sent us their Revodock Maxidok 17-in-1 Thunderbolt 5 Docking Station to take a look at. This dock is jam-packed with ports, specs and features which allow you to connect and charge all of your devices, store data externally and transfer it between connected devices at blistering speeds.

As this is a Thunderbolt 5 device, it caters to the higher end of the laptop and display market, but it is also backwards compatible and still works extremely well when connecting to devices with standard USB-C.

If your devices support Thunderbolt, though, the convenience and speed at which you can transfer data is so fast it seems unbelievable at times!

What’s in the Box

Along with the dock, UGREEN include everything you will need to get up and running. There is a 240-watt external power adapter to power everything. It comes with 3 different cables with plug tops to suit the main world regions. There is a heat sync for an NVME drive and a screwdriver included for installation.

UGREEN Revodock Maxidok 17-in-1 Thunderbolt 5 Docking Station Design and Specs

We have reviewed many UGREEN products over the years and have always been impressed with their build quality and design. With the Revodock Maxidok, though, UGREEN have really upped their game, and everything about this product has a really premium look and feel.

Starting with the box, the hinged opening presents the dock front and centre of the packaging and feels more reminiscent of what you would see with a fancy watch, and it’s a good indicator of the effort that has been put into the overall product. All of the accessories included are also of high quality and well packaged.

Moving on to the Revodock Maxidok itself, the premium material vibe continues. The steel chassis feels solid and is finished in a two-tone space grey type colour and copper, which is diagonally split along the sides.

The front face of the device has the power button, 3 x USB-C ports, a micro and full-size SD card slot, capable of 312MB/s transfer and a headphone jack. The bottom of the device has a hatch and bay for an M2 NVMe drive, with the back of the device having the remainder of the ports.

These include: 2 x Thunderbolt 5 Downstream ports, 1 Thunderbolt 5 Upstream port, 1 x DisplayPort, Audio In & Out ports, 3 x USB-A ports capable of 10Gbps and a 2.5GbE Ethernet port. The device can also supply 240 watts to charge devices and power peripherals, and you can keep everything secured to your desk with a Kensington lock.

Some of the other headline features include:

• All-in-one expansion: 17 ports for data, video, networking, storage, and charging.
• Ultra-fast data transfers: Supports up to 120Gbps unidirectional bandwidth and 80Gbps bi-directional bandwidth
• Built-in NVMe PCIe Gen4 x4 M.2 slot: Open and edit 4K assets and large files directly, with no waiting around for copying or loading. More affordable than upgrading internal device storage.
• Flagship multi-display support: Supports three independent displays (Windows), two independent displays (Mac), as well as single 8K@60Hz or dual 6K@60Hz outputs.
• Built-in 2.5GbE network port: Transfer large files such as 4K footage quickly and reliably. No need to worry about flaky WiFi connections.
• 24/7 stable performance: Advanced thermal engineering keeps performance stable even throughout 24/7 high-load testing, with the surface remaining under 40°C.

Day-to-Day Use

For a high-spec device such as the Revodock Maxidok, there are a number of consumers out there who have the right equipment chain and workflow process that will make this device seem like a “must buy”, but it is also a really useful device to have outside of these scenarios.

The first people who will clearly benefit from a device like this are people who are in the Apple ecosystem and mainly do their day-to-day computing on a laptop or tablet. Apple devices have been Thunderbolt compatible for some time, and as they release new devices, they generally update the versions of Thunderbolt they are compatible with. The latest iPad Pros are compatible up to Thunderbolt 3, which is still faster and more capable than USB-C, and the latest MacBooks are Thunderbolt 5 compatible, so the Revodock Maxidok is ideal for use with these products.

While there are many Windows-based machines that support older Thunderbolt standards, the number that are Thunderbolt 5 compatible is still fairly low, so I think it is fair to say Apple users will appreciate the Revodock Maxidok more. At least for now.

So why is the Revodock Maxidok so useful? There are many reasons. If you have a recent MacBook Pro, for example, and you didn’t want to pay the Apple tax to include a larger SSD for storage, with the Revodock Maxidok, you can install an external NVMe drive, which you can read and write to at a speed comparable to or exceeding what is available to you with the internal drive on your Mac. Large files can be stored on this drive and accessed at full speed when needed.

This isn’t like connecting a USB drive and waiting a lifetime for that 4K video project you were working on to transfer between devices. The Revodock Maxidok will allow you to max out the Thunderbolt 5 transfer speeds with the correct NVMe SSD installed in the dock.

During our testing, we installed a Crucial P510 1TB M.2 NVMe drive in the Revodock Maxidok. This drive is apple of 11000MB/s read and 9500MB/s write speed. Thunderbolt 5 allows you to take full advantage of these crazy speeds and at a capacity which costs a lot less than what Apple would charge you.

For anyone who works with large file sizes or has to transfer folders containing thousands of smaller files, you will know how much of a pain this process can be using traditional external hard drives.

Using Thunderbolt 3, 4 and 5 compatible devices with NVMe above, we transferred folders containing 40 GB of audio files and 100 GB of videos to see how fast it performed in the real world.

Transferring the 40GB folder from the Revodock Maxidok to an M5 iPad Pro 11 took about 20 seconds. Copying it from the iPad back to the NVMe drive took around 15 seconds.

With a Thunderbolt 4 compatible MacBook Air and a Thunderbolt 5 compatible MacBook Pro, the transfer times back and forth between the Revodock Maxidok for the 100GB folder ranged from 15 to 20 seconds. For files of this size, it pretty much feels instant. No matter what cable, device or protocol, be it Thunderbolt or USB-C, you can transfer data at incredibly fast speeds compared to most external drives.

The next key feature of the Revodock Maxidok is when you are connecting external displays. The beauty of Thunderbolt displays is that you can daisy chain cables between them for data transfer and, in some cases, for power too. Revodock Maxidok supports 3 independent displays with Windows, one 8K display @60Hz, or dual 6K monitors at 60Hz with Mac.

With the recent launch of updated MacBooks, which can now come equipped with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, the Revodock Maxidok will be able to support both single and dual 8K@60Hz displays, or triple 4K@144Hz displays.

What that means is that you can connect your MacBook Pro to the Revodock Maxidok via Thunderbolt 5. Extend your display to two additional monitors and power any accessories connected via USB. The Revodock Maxidok becomes a hub of connectivity for both data and charging your devices. It removes clutter as you can daisy chain devices, and it also removes the need for dongles or other peripherals to connect things like micro SD cards.

And that brings us on to the other main feature of the Revodock Maxidok. It becomes one device to power them all! Rather than having multiple chargers or places to charge your laptop, tablet, phone and watch or earphones, you can connect everything to the Revodock Maxidok. It removes further clutter and reduces the number of devices you need to keep everything charged.

Conclusion

The Revodock Maxidok is an incredibly well-connected and spec’d device. If you already have devices such as a MacBook, iPad or Thunderbolt displays, this device won’t need a sales pitch, and its convenience and capability are obvious.

Being able to connect and charge all of your devices, add external storage up to 8TBs and connect to it at blistering speeds while removing clutter and the need for multiple devices to keep on top of things means the Revodock Maxidok 17-in-1 Thunderbolt 5 Docking Station is a 100% recomemndaiton if the use cases above sound familiar to you. And even if they don’t, having all this connectivity, storage and power available in one device will be of use to many.

The Revodock Maxidok 17-in-1 Thunderbolt 5 Docking Station is available to purchase directly from UGREEN on their website or from Amazon, with stock available this week. Both sites currently have pre-release sale prices available.