Accell Thunderbolt 3 Dock Review

TweakTown's Rating: 84%

The Bottom Line

Akitio has put together a solid enclosure with the Quad X offering USB PD as a strong selling feature for MacBook users and the ability to run multiple monitors as a bonus.

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We haven't seen too many products come through from Accell, but with the booming Thunderbolt 3 market, they have decided to dip their toes in with a Thunderbolt 3 Dock of their own.

The Accell Thunderbolt 3 Dock is one of the most unusual docks we have seen this past year, apart from its standard form factor it uses hard edges and a bare aluminum design that certainly stands out. Connectivity starts with a 40GBps Thunderbolt 3 input that offers a daisy chain Thunderbolt 3 connection, Gigabit Ethernet, 2x USB 3.1 ports, 3x USB 3.0 port, and 3.5mm analog audio.

Compatibility includes Windows 10 along with macOS 10.12.4 and later. MSRP comes in at $349.99 with a one-year warranty.

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Packaging offers an image of the dock front and center; connectivity options are below.

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The back goes into more detail with a port breakdown of the unit and specification list.

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Included in the box, we have the power adapter rated at 20v 6.75a, Thunderbolt 3 cable and user guide.

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As mentioned, this dock takes on its own design staying away from modern lines in favor of hard edges and bare aluminum exterior. The front edge offer branding and power LEDs to the right.

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The right side starts off with analog audio in and out ports with two USB 3.0.

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On the backside, we have USB 3.0 with charging support on the far left followed by gigabit ethernet, 2x USB 3.0 ports and Thunderbolt 3. On the far right, we have DisplayPort for 4K monitor support.

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To start testing on the Accell Thunderbolt 3 Dock, we fired up DST. Testing the daisy chain port with our G-Drive Pro SSD, we reached 906 MB/s read, and 859 MB/s write.

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Flipping over to our SanDisk Portable SSD, we see 351 MB/s read and 308 MB/s write on USB 3.0

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USB 3.1 sees a nice increase to 747 MB/s read and 623 Mb/s write with the SanDisk Portable SSD.

We have seen a lot of Docks this year, and the Accell certainly has its place. The build quality is up there with is all aluminum design and while I'm not a fan of the hard edges or boxed design it doesn't take away from the performance of the unit.

Internally, this dock is what I call mainstream. Nothing really to set it apart from the rest of the market but gets all the basics right. With that, we had a good amount of Type-C connectivity including charging support for smartphones and tablets. Storage performance was as expected for both USB 3.0 and 3.1 with Thunderbolt doing quite well too. As for display connectivity, we don't have any DP monitors to test with currently, but Accell did provide a USB-C to HDMI adapter with this unit. With that adapter, we had no trouble pushing 4K to our 40" TV.

Compared to the rest of the market, Accell seems to be slightly high on their pricing, similar to that of Dell that had their solution hovering around $350. That said, I would put the Accell Thunderbolt 3 Dock in my top five for sure for its connectivity options, again price really makes it hard to beat the Thunder3 Dock Pro at this time.

Tyler's Test System Specifications

• Motherboard: ASUS Prime Z370 (buy from Amazon)
• CPU: Intel Core i3 8350K (buy from Amazon)
• RAM: Corsair Vengeance 32GB 4x8GB DDR4 3200 (buy from Amazon)
• Cooler: Corsair Hydro H115i (buy from Amazon)
• Case: Corsair Air 540 (buy from Amazon)
• OS Storage: Samsung 960 EVO 250GB (buy from Amazon)
• Power Supply: Corsair RM850x (buy from Amazon)
• OS: Microsoft Windows 10 (buy from Amazon)
• Wi-Fi NIC: ASUS PCE-AC88 (buy from Amazon)
• 10Gbe NIC: ASUS XG-C100C (buy from Amazon)
• Thunderbolt 3: ASUS Thunderbolt EX3 (buy from Amazon)