Anker Prime TB5 Docking Station, 14-in-1 Thunderbolt 5 Dock for Laptops

This Anker Prime TB5 Docking Station is easily the best dock I have used with my MacBook Pro. It feels like a true desktop replacement setup instead of just another USB-C hub. The biggest advantage is how much it handles through one connection. Monitors, accessories, storage, networking, charging, and other peripherals can all stay connected to the dock, so when I sit down at my desk I only have to plug one cable into my MacBook. Performance has been excellent. Transfers are extremely fast, everything connects reliably, and I have not had issues with devices randomly disconnecting or needing to constantly unplug and reconnect the dock. The Thunderbolt 5 bandwidth also gives this a lot more headroom than most docks I have used before. Build quality is fantastic as well. It feels substantial, premium, and made to stay on a desk rather than slide around every time you plug something in. It is definitely expensive, but if you use a MacBook Pro as your primary computer and have a full desk setup, I think this is one of those accessories that actually justifies the premium. Tons of ports, excellent performance, and an incredibly clean one-cable setup. Best dock I’ve owned so far.

I was initially worried about dropping this much money on a dock that needs to work with two different Windows laptops (a Dell and an Alienware). I needed something that could power the Dell and drive video to two monitors, but also support peripherals. (For the Alienware, I didn’t care about power delivery.) I have to say, it was easy to set up and worked without a fuss. The only “fuss” was needing to find a USB-C to Displayport adapter since there is only one HDMI/DP output (and you have to choose), but I didn’t need to do any fiddling to get the USB webcam, mouse, two monitors, keyboard, and SSD connected to either laptop. Anker has pretty much cornered the market for me on peripherals, chargers, and power banks. I think if I were needing to connect more monitors, I would be very annoyed with the limited options, but as I knew what I was getting ahead of time and only need the two displays (plus the laptop screens), I don’t feel like it warrants knocking a star off for that. The build quality feels solid and looks stylish, which is par for the course for Anker, and i love the way it looks. A bit steep of a price, but it sure beats the pants off of the old Dell TB dock I was using and feels more premium, too. I haven’t had any issues with heat or noise, and while it’s a fairly chunky unit, it sits rather securely in the desk and doesn’t take up much real estate.

The best part about the Anker Prime TB5 dock is style. It looks really good on your desktop, unlike all the other docks you find which are just ugly. It also stays quite cool, although I don't use it to charge anything, just for data transfers. Function-wise, it has 2 downstream TB5 ports, meaning you can connect to up to 2 external drives or up to 2 external monitors via these TB 5 ports. It also has 2 USB-C 3.2 ports as well as 3 USB-A 3.2 ports, as well as 2.5Gbps Ethernet. Two video ports, one HDMI and one DP, are provided but you can only use ONE of the two at a time, not both simultaneously. The HDMI and DP one-or-the-other choice is one of the compromises Anker has made regarding this dock; the other compromise is more unforgiving given its price (unless the high price is explained by Trump's tariffs): the microSD (TF) and SDXC slots are only UHS-I with up to 104Mbps speed, which is 1/3 of what you get with fully compliant UHS-II SD slots. You can get a Mac-compatible strip hub with full UHS-II support for like 30 bucks, so it's unforgiving of Anker to include such lowly SD support in such an expensive dock. All in all, though, this is a worthy docking station because it looks pleasing! When you work hard in front of your Mac and multiple monitors, an eye-pleasing dock makes life more enjoyable. The LED light is more of a gimmick but maybe you're into these things so that's a plus in some way. The USB ports all perform as advertised, and the overall build quality is excellent, too. Comes with a very high-quality TB5 cable. BTW, it doesn't come with a manual but you can scan a QR code to get the manual online. It mostly deals with how to set up multiple monitors for Macs and other OSes. UPDATE (05.20.2025): Earlier this month I encounted, several times, an issue whereby after waking up from sleep, the SD and microSD slots are no longer functional; the dock needed to be turned off and back on to fix this (using the power button at the front). Originally I suspected it to be a bug with the docking station; later, when I restarted my MacBook, the problem went away and the SD slots have been working consistently since. So I'm bringing the rating back to the original 4 stars. Overall I'm happy with the performance of this dock -- save for its slow SD readers. As you can see from one of my attached photos, I actually use a Lexar UHS-II SD/microSD reader for my SD data transfer needs, as it's more than thrice (!) as fast as this dock's built-in reader.

I'm using this dock with both a Framework 13 Pro laptop and a MacBook Pro. The MBP has Thunderbolt 5 so the dock works perfectly. The Framework laptop has Thunderbolt 4 and runs Ubuntu linux. Most dock functions work well with only a few caveats: Ports are a bit slower but that is expected. My monitor doesn't fully "sleep" when I lock the laptop or put it to sleep. My workaround is to manually turn the monitor off or use a fullscreen video as a screensaver of sorts. I'm sure that's just a quirk with Linux and not a problem with the dock, itself. Important note: The thunderbolt 5 cable that came with the dock wasn't very good. I started experiencing connection glitches like the monitor flickering or drives getting disconnected almost immediately out of the box. This was with both my MBP and FW13p. I replaced the cable with an Apple Thunderbolt 5 cable and it's been rock solid ever since. The Apple TB5 cable is very pricey but I highly recommend giving that cable a try if you experience any issues. Setup details: - using Apple Thunderbolt 5 cable between dock and host computer - monitor: msi MPG 272URX QD-OLED 27 (connection to dock via DisplayPort 2.1) - cable to monitor is a Cable Matters [VESA Certified] 80Gbps DisplayPort 2.1 Cable Other notes: - MacBook Pro has a M4 Pro processor which is capable of Thunderbolt 5 - All features work 100% with MacBook Pro - FW13p was able to output 4K@240Hz with HDR to the monitor - FW13p has an Intel Core Ultra X7 358H processor with Arc B390 - FW13p is running Ubuntu Linux 26.04.01 LTS with all 3rd party drivers and features enabled - I did not try connecting a second monitor.

Love this docking station. Has ample usb ports and allows me to use connect my Thinkpad to the monitor as well as charge my device at the same time. The shape is decent like a cube, reminding me of a tesseract. Weight is substantial; it’s heavy so it won’t easily be knocked over by a curious cat or careless human. This means it stays put on my desk. I’m curious why the power button exists to turn off or on for this blue light; not a very useful feature but it’s aesthetically pleasing at least. This thing seems heavy duty with a nice smooth finish which is nice on the fingers. I’m glad there’s no digital display screen here and buttons instead.

First off, I realize my use case may be a bit of an edge case since I wanted to use this with a few different Apple devices -- M5 Pro MacBook Pro 16 (Thunderbolt 5), M3 Max MacBook Pro (Thunderbolt 4), and an M1 Mac mini (Thunderbolt 3). Despite that, I wasn't asking much of this device-- just two displays (1x 4K, 1x 1440p) and an ethernet connection. While this works perfectly fine for Thunderbolt 4, it just could not handle backwards compatibility with the Thunderbolt 3 device, despite the description claiming it was compatible with M1 devices. On my M1 mini, it can only handle a single display and ethernet. The second display doesn't register at all which is extremely disappointing given that my 7 year old CalDigit TS3+ dock can handle 2x 4K displays, 1Gb ethernet, and a bunch of USB devices all on just Thunderbolt 3. I expected this would handle this with ease, but it did not. That's not very versatile, and definitely not what I expected based on the advertised capability. Also, in terms of noise and heat, this dock definitely can get a bit toasty and the fan will spin up. I also was rather disappointed by is that the fan is always running constantly, even when nothing is plugged into the PC Thunderbolt port and nothing is charging off it. I get that the active cooling is needed when it's in use, but this feels ridiculous and unnecessary. Granted, the fan is pretty quiet, but even with it about 2.5 feet from me, I can still faintly hear it constantly spinning in a semi-quiet room. Despite that, it's decently compact which is great, but it's a bit chunky compared to the CalDigit docks that I'm used to-- probably because this uses active cooling. I'm normally a big fan of Anker's products and have been for years, but this dock just isn't the one for Thunderbolt 5. I'm returning it because it doesn't perform as advertised and as a result is just a poor value for the price.

I’m new to the Mac world but prefer a dock with a hardwired LAN connection when at my desk. When I initially attached it, I needed to install a driver for full functionality. I used a 4k external monitor through the DisplayPort. The single Thunderbolt 5 connection did the rest. The power button has a few functions that are worth reading about. The first time I pushed it, did not cut off the power as expected. After reading the instructions, I found that a tap of the power button just turns off the blue ring surrounding the top of the adapter. If you hold the power button for 3 seconds, then it cycles the power. The power button will also sleep the laptop, so it is an easy switch to turn everything off. I did connect the Ethernet port to a 2.5Gps LAN and it identified the speed and worked quite well. I have gravitated towards Anker products because every one just works well. A big bonus is the there is not any external power supply or wall wart. Just a simple 2 prong power plug that fits easily into a power strip. I actually bought a second unit for work. I can recommend this product. Its small size is also beneficial. ETA: I wanted to buy Thunderbolt 5 monitor, but pricing prevented it. I did re-purpose a ROG Swift OLED PG32UCDMR which was a gaming monitor but supported the USB-C connection. It immediately connected with the previous 240Hz 4k connection without issue through the Thunderbolt 5 port. The picture is stunning. After spending time on two separate connections with a single laptop, I can say this is an impressive piece of kit. I don’t know how you could do better.

This is an expensive dock but I really wanted to reduce the number of connections to my MacBook Pro M3 Max on my desktop to a single connection and also free up my MacBook Pro's other ports. This dock allowed me to connect power, Ethernet, my Ultrawide monitor, a keyboard/mouse/headset switcher and one or more external SSD's all through one cable. Be aware that there is a USB limitation of a maximum 5 tiers of hubs through one connection and this dock's rear USB-A ports are actually one extra tier away than the rest of its USB ports. Five tiers seems like plenty but I unexpectedly hit this limit because my MacBook Pro was connected to the dock and I had a keyboard/mouse switching USB hub (to share keyboard and mouse with multiple computers) connected to the dock and a pair of keyboard/mouse wireless receivers connected via a little USB splitter on the end of a USB cable connected to the switcher. I found that this did not work with either of the rear USB-A ports on this dock but would work with any of the other ports. After learning of this limitation from Anker support, I eliminated one tier by replacing the splitter with two separate USB cords to my switcher. This allowed me to successfully connect and use one of the dock's rear USB-A ports. However, I encountered a separate issue where, after a month or so of use, the dock developed a barely audible but still irritating hum or whine. This noise persisted as long as the dock was plugged into power and regardless of whether my connected MacBook Pro was asleep or active. I reported the issue (and sent in a video) and Anker support agreed to replace the unit. Unfortunately, the replacement unit immediately produced a similar but slightly different "cycling" tone. After sending in a new video recording, Anker's engineering team declared that this noise was deemed within spec. At this point I decided to return the unit and request a refund. Neither of these noises would probably be very noticeable in a noisy office environment but it was far too annoying in my quiet office. Given that this is a premium product and it sits next to two much more complex devices (my MacBook Pro M3 and my LG Ultrawide monitor) that also support Thunderbolt and provide multiple USB ports but are able to operate in silence, I think Anker needs to rework the design of their dock.

This is a must have, I use it for a few different laptops I have (personal, work), the docking station works amazing, tooka bit of tinkering as there is only really one display port and i had to use one of the USB c ports on the back to connect a secon monitor up, but in the end once i did a bit of research and got the correct cable, it works amazing.

Works as advertised and great. I also have the UGreen and this dock is more reliable than it.

It’s great so far and it works perfectly with my M4 Pro Mac mini. However it doesn’t work as well with my 13” M4 iPad Pro cause sometimes my Studio Display turns on and sometimes it doesn’t. It is listed as being compatible with USB4, but when I tried it with my Asus ProArt P16 laptop I got last year with the RTX 4090, it doesn’t work at all. I’m wondering if mine is defective.

Works as advertised. Plenty of ports, speed is good, runs quietly. A great addition to my workspace.

Great little device the first month-ish of use so far. Seems like one of the more affordable TB5 docking stations out there at the moment and has enough hubs to let me run my work setup without any real issue with the entire front to spare for plug n play devices.