Apart from making locks that enable users to secure their laptops, Kensington has come out of the shadows of being known for their most widely used product – the Kensington lock, and have entered the field of USB Docks with their new SD5000T Thunderbolt 3 Dock, announced at CES 2017 earlier today in Las Vegas.
The SD5000T Thunderbolt 3 Dock was unveiled at the CES 2017
This dock might actually solve the dilemma of the curious case of the missing USB and SD Card ports. Now that MacBooks, most notably and other laptops seem to come only with USB Type-C as standard, the dock will allow for users to connect their other conventionally oriented peripheral devices to the system without needing anymore adaptors. The dock will consist of two USB 3.0 ports, one DisplayPort, a 3.5mm audio jack, a Gigabit Ethernet port, as well as a USB Type-C port for charging of an external device, the other one will be Thunderbolt 3 USB-C port for connecting to the laptop and a second Thunderbolt USB-C port for anything the user wants to throw at it.
The dock itself is powered by a Thunderbolt 3 port and can supply around 85W of power to the connneted laptop, providing users with the convenience they need. It’s also now one of the very few docks out there that can charge the more powerful and larger laptops like the MacBook Pro – the 15-inch version too! But for the convenience and the host of ports that it has to offer, Kensington’s asking price is as much as that of a laptop – around $349-$379. It’s definitely one of the more premium offerings around, but it’s also one of the most feature packed.
On the security side of things, the company has updated itself with the times. Older laptops were a lot bulkier for the traditional Kensington locks, but now, they’re too slim to even have space for one. Which is why the company made a more compact form factor of a locking system called the Locking Station 2.0. It’ll let users use the Kensington Locks with the newer, thinner laptops and once again allow users to feel safe, knowing that their laptops will be secure. To make things sweeter, the company has also introduced its own biometric locking system called the VeriMark Fingerprint Key – a really small USB fingerprint sensor which is in accordance with FIDO standards for users who want to be on the cutting edge of security, provided they don’t lose it first.