It’s been a bit of a wait, but Belkin’s Thunderbolt Express Dock has finally arrived. The $299 docking station—first announced way back in January 2012—went on sale at Belkin’s online store Tuesday.
The Thunderbolt Express Dock offers two Thunderbolt ports for daisy-chaining additional Thunderbolt peripherals—the only product of its kind to do so, according to Belkin.
Docking stations like the Thunderbolt Express Dock are popular with Mac portable owners who have limited peripheral connections and don’t want to have to connect and disconnect printers, hard drives, speakers, scanners, and so forth from their laptops each time they come or leave the office.
By connecting just a single Thunderbolt cable (which isn’t included) from your Mac to the dock, the Thunderbolt Express Dock allows you to connect a multitude of peripherals via the dock’s three USB 3.0 ports and one FireWire 800 port. Other connections include a single Gigabit Ethernet port, as well as both audio in and out ports.
The dock’s second Thunderbolt port gives you the ability to add up to five more Thunderbolt devices to the dock by daisy chaining them together.
At one point the company announced that an eSATA port would be available on the Thunderbolt Express Port, but that port is not found on this final shipping product.
Macworld will be receiving a Thunderbolt Express Dock later this week, so check back soon for a full review.