So many things are coming together, right now, to make Black Friday one of the best days to buy a Thunderbolt dock and expand your laptop’s I/O capabilities. And we have two fantastic deals to point you to.
I love Thunderbolt docking stations, and I’ve reviewed dozens of them for PCWorld. They were so incredibly expensive during the pandemic, and they’re so cheap right now as retailers dump older stocks. It’s actually hard to pare down the list of the best Black Friday Thunderbolt dock deals, because retailers are tossing older Thunderbolt 3 hardware overboard, and it’s really just as good as the latest Thunderbolt 4 tech!
So here are the two docks that you absolutely must buy: the $89 HP Thunderbolt Dock G2 (75% off!!) and the $102 Targus USB-C Docking Station (59% off).
I really, really liked the HP Thunderbolt G4, so much I awarded it the best Thunderbolt dock for business. It’s compact, puts out a ton of power (over 100W) and offers gobs of ports. Yes, it has a built-in cord. Yes, it offers DisplayPort connections (most monitors offer both HDMI and DisplayPort ports, but you may need to invest in a cable or adapter if they don’t). It’s simply an excellent docking station, on offer for an absolutely insane price.
The Targus USB-C Docking Station is a Thunderbolt docking station with a twist — because it doesn’t need Thunderbolt. Instead, it uses DisplayLink, which uses a small chip inside the dock to perform video compression and increase the effective throughput. The YouTube and Netflix videos you watch do the same thing, and the compression isn’t noticeable. So DisplayLink docks like this one give you lots, lots more value for a low price. The Targus dock offers you the ability to connect to a pair of 4K displays and charge your laptop with 65W of power — just what you need, and little more. DisplayLink, honestly, may be even better than Thunderbolt.
Two years ago these docks would cost $250. They’re a fraction of that now. This is the time to buy.
Author: Mark Hachman, Senior Editor
As PCWorld's senior editor, Mark focuses on Microsoft news and chip technology, among other beats. He has formerly written for PCMag, BYTE, Slashdot, eWEEK, and ReadWrite.