Sonnet has maintained its excellent reputation for quality accessories for Mac users, with the new Echo 13 Thunderbolt 5 SSD Dock offering tons of ports and even fast storage expansion too.
A staple of Mac desktops is the Thunderbolt dock, a device that can take advantage of the massive bandwidth of Thunderbolt connections and share it out to a ton of peripherals. With the advent of Thunderbolt 5, a new wave of docks are emerging, taking advantage of the extra available bandwidth.
Sonnets attempt at the product category, the Echo 13 Thunderbolt 5 SSD Dock, is one that aims to provide a lot of utility to consumers using that bandwidth. Both in terms of what they could connect up to their Mac and in terms of storage capabilities.
It’s certainly building on top of the capabilities of high-end Thunderbolt 4 docks, pushing things further to take advantage of the new standard’s data capacity.
Sonnet provided us an Echo 13 Thunderbolt 5 SSD Dock for review, with 2TB of storage. Our test platforms are a M4 Ultra Mac Studio with Thunderbolt 5, and a M1 Ultra Mac Studio. A M2 MacBook Air was used for power delivery testing.
Sonnet Echo 13 Thunderbolt 5 SSD Dock – Design
On the outside, there’s little clue about it being anything other than a fairly typical Thunderbolt dock. A nondescript rectangular box, it has ports around the outside edges, while the top is covered with venting and a Sonnettech logo.
At 8.7 inches long by 3.8 inches wide and 1.3 inches thick, it’s also fairly average-sized for a dock. The total weight, though is 1.75 pounds, and that’s in part due to the 6.6-inch by 3.2-inch by 1-inch power supply that accompanies it.
Sonnet’s Echo 13 Thunderbolt 5 SSD Dock review: The box contents
As with most Thunderbolt docks bar two we can think off off the top of our heads, this dock is more likely to be used at a desk than kept in a bag. At least the power brick can be hidden, tucked away behind the desk, leaving the dock itself in view.
Sonnet Echo 13 Thunderbolt 5 SSD Dock – Ports and connectivity
As a Thunderbolt 5 dock, it offers a very large number of ports for use. The notable thing is its inclusion of five Thunderbolt 5 ports, with the host including 140W of power delivery, more than enough to recharge a MacBook Pro.
There are also three downstream ports having 15W or 60W power options. This is a big inclusion, as users can really try to maximize the connection’s usage with the dock, while also reducing the need for daisy-chaining.
Sonnet’s Echo 13 Thunderbolt 5 SSD Dock review: The front port collection
Those ports are accompanied by three USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A charging ports, along with a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port version. The connectivity list is rounded out by 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet, UHS-II microSD and SD card slots for media transfers, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
Along with those are indicators for power and the link to the host, a power button, a power port at the back, and a pair of Kensington security slots at the end.
Having a total of twelve ports or connective items including the uplink connection, is good in itself. The mix is also going to be pretty decent for most power Mac users, without any real port oddities on the list.
The addition of three downstream Thunderbolt 5 ports to go with the one host port is also a big surprise, and also helps reduce the need for daisy-chaining a bit.
When it comes to using it with a Mac, the Thunderbolt 5 ports have backward compatibility going back to Thunderbolt 3, as well as USB 4 support.
You can also hook it u p to a wide variety of Mac models, including all Apple Silicon Macs, Intel Macs with Thunderbolt 3 ports, and an iPad Pro with an M-series chip. Windows is also supported with Thunderbolt 4 and 5 connections, as well as similarly-equipped Chromebooks.
Sonnet Echo 13 Thunderbolt 5 SSD Dock – Storage
As the name hints, the Echo 13 has an SSD space inside. That means you can embed an M.2 NVMe SSD in there as well, to serve as an external drive without needing a separate enclosure.
Due to the use of Thunderbolt 5, Sonnet is capitalizing on the massive amount of available bandwidth, by claiming some extremely high write speeds. It also offers the dock with 1TB, 2TB, or 4TB of Thunderbolt 5-certified Kingston PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD storage configurations. As I’ve mentioned, we have a 2TB SNV3S2000G installed.
As for how fast these drives can be, Sonnet claims that it can achieve read speeds of up to 6,000 megabytes per second for reads and 5,000 megabytes per second for writes. This is a massively fast transfer speed, far more than your typical external drive can muster.
Sonnet’s Echo 13 Thunderbolt 5 SSD Dock review: The rear ports
When used on a Thunderbolt 4 or Thunderbolt 3 connection, the speed claims dip down to 3,400 megabytes per second for reads and 2,200 megabytes per second for writes. This is still an extremely usable speed, though it would still depend on what other peripherals are in use more here than on the Thunderbolt 5’s 80Gbs connection.
When we weren’t doing anything else at all with the dock, when connected to Thunderbolt 5 on our Mac Studio test bed we got about 4400 megabytes per second read, and 4000 megabytes per second for writes. When two 4K monitors were connected, and some other casual I/O was being performed, this dropped to about 3400 megabytes per second read, and 3000 megabytes per second write.
A Thunderbolt 4 host stayed at about 2200 megabytes per second for reads and 2000 megabytes per second for writes, laden or unladen with other data needs. We’re still pretty happy about that.
All told, this is still pretty good. The drive isn’t the fastest, nor does it have the most cache, but it works very well here.
Sonnet Echo 13 Thunderbolt 5 SSD Dock – Display
With such massive bandwidth available, you would expect the dock to support high-resolution screens. It certainly does, but with a bit of an asterisk for Mac users.
It can work with Thunderbolt-based monitors and those using USB-C without needing anything but a connecting cable. It also has DisplayPort and HDMI monitor support, connecting through the Thunderbolt connections using an adapter.
The dock is marketed as capable of supporting two 8K monitors, or three 4K displays, simultaneously. However, neither of these are really a reality for Mac users.
When it comes down to what each Mac can support display-wise, a lot of this comes down to Apple’s own specifications. Therefore M1, M2, and M3 Macs are listed as having support for only one display.
Apple Silicon Pro, Max, and Ultra models are listed as having support for two displays, mostly given the lack of multi-stream transport (MST). Sonnet also says that 8K screens are not supported on Mac at all, which makes sense, given the lack of MST.
Even more oddly, on the Windows side, display support is more extensive. It’s possible to go up to three monitors with the dock on Windows computers, and without any 8K warning either.
For the typical Mac user who may need to connect one 4K display to their Mac, it’s not an issue. For power users who need that digital workspace, it’s problematic.
This is not a Sonnet issue. This is a MacOS and Thunderbolt one.
Sonnet Echo 13 Thunderbolt 5 SSD Dock – One of the best Thunderbolt docks we’ve ever used
As an example of a Thunderbolt 5 dock, the Echo 13 has a lot to like about it. There’s a decent selection of interfaces, covering most typical user needs without going down the legacy port route.
It’s also capitalizing on the massive bandwidth of Thunderbolt 5 with its built-in storage. It’s one thing to offer sufficient storage capacity, but it’s another to offer it with such massive transfer speeds.
Sonnet ships it with storage, and the pricing for it is reasonable. In fact, it’s so reasonable, that there are Thunderbolt 5 docks shipping now without storage, that are the same retail price as Sonnet’s with 2TB.
It’s not hard to imagine content creators electing to pick up the Echo 13, if only for this reason.
Sonnet Echo 13 Thunderbolt 5 SSD Dock – Pros
- Port count, including Thunderbolt 5 connection collection
- Speed of storage
- Power delivery is high
Sonnet Echo 13 Thunderbolt 5 SSD Dock – Cons
- Display limitations on Mac — but this is fairly universal
- Hefty power brick
Sonnet Echo 13 Thunderbolt 5 SSD Dock –
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Sonnet and CalDigit remain our go-to recommendations for things Thunderbolt. The Echo 13 Thunderbolt 5 SSD Dock is a continiation of that legacy, and I recommend it whole-heartedly.
Where to buy the Sonnet Echo 13 Thunderbolt 5 SSD Dock
The Sonnet Echo 13 Thunderbolt 5 SSD Dock is available from Sonnet directly, priced from $399.99 for 1TB to $669.99 for 4TB of storage. It’s also available from Amazon, priced from $399.99 to $699.99.
