Belkin Connect Thunderbolt 4 Docking Station 5-in-1 USB-C Multiport Core Hub w 96W Power Delivery for Mac Windows

EDIT: It's now 1/19/26, I bought this around January 2025, zero issues with the dock or charging, working like a champ. I have an MBP M3 Pro, I did a lot of research into the cheapest solution for: 1. One cable to plug into the MacBook Pro. 2. Must support dual external displays (I use 1080 not 4K). 3. Must work in both open and clamshell mode. 4. Must charge the MacBook Pro. 5. Must support peripherals through my Cable Matters USB switch. 6. No software installation is required, the dock must support all functionality out of the box without any additional software (ex: DisplayLink) or drivers. 7. All of these must work on Apple Silicon. The cheapest docks I tried didn't work, they would either mirror the display or not show the desktop on one of the displays at all, and the reviews were also useless since they were all old reviews for Intel not Apple Silicon. I chose this one because my company gave me a Belkin dock for my work MacBook Pro (also an M3 Pro). At the office I use that dock to get dual monitors in both open and clamshell mode. The Belkin dock they gave me was an F4U095, which is their Thunderbolt 3 Express dock, this one is the F4U097 which is their Thunderbolt 3 Pro dock. Because the Express version of the dock works, surely this Pro version would work with my personal MBP M3 Pro. I am pleased to report that this does indeed fulfill all requirements above, at its price it's probably the best option. You won't find anything cheaper than $100. Here are some specifics about my setup (I made a diagram as well): * My mouse, keyboard, headphones and a USB flash drive are connected to a USB switch from Cable Matters (ASIN: B0CT6CK72N), I connect this to the USB-A port on the back of the Belkin dock through a USB-C cable (ASIN: B01GGKYIHS) and a UGREEN USB-C to USB-A converter (ASIN: B0CY1Y3TSQ). I connect to the dock through USB-A because with my setup there are no free USB-C ports on the back of the dock, there's one on the front but having the cable go around to the front is ugly. * Samsung G50F 32" display, connected by HDMI to DisplayPort on Belkin dock (cable ASIN: B015OW3M1W). * Acer K242HQL monitor, connected by HDMI to Thunderbolt 3 Port on Belkin dock (cable ASIN: B083KTYFCW). So even with this fairly complicated setup it works. If you have a less complicated setup, say you only have your MacBook and this dock, no PC, no USB switch (you're going to plug peripherals directly into this dock) I would say it's guaranteed to work. My MBP M3 Pro is always in clamshell mode in a vertical stand, I never unplug it or remove it from its stand. Only one cable from the power delivery port on the back of the Belkin dock connects to my MBP, it provides 85W of charging power along with the connections to everything which is way more than enough, I used to charge at 67W even 45W would probably work, 20W would but only if the Mac was sleeping. ❌ Problems Encountered: ❌ It takes forever for optimized battery charging (the 80% limit thing) to kick in if you unplug it. I'm not sure this is an issue with the dock, I think it's just that I never unplug my MBP from power and the machine learning stuff Apple uses for it is just trash. My Asus G16 laptop has a battery charge limit feature that works flawlessly. With MacOS every time I disconnect power (which is never besides a power outage), it takes at least two weeks at 100% until the charge limit kicks in. If you unplug it more frequently than I do the algorithm might make it kick in faster, who knows. I'm aware that people use third-party software (AlDente) to enforce a charge limit, I don't want to. Once the 80% limit kicks in and MacOS recognizes it (shows "Not Charging: Desktop Mode" in Battery settings), it works as I expect it to and stays at 80% for weeks at a time even through restarts, it's just disconnecting it from power that messes with it for me. 🤔 Miscellaneous Things: 🤔 This dock behaves differently when you put the MacBook to sleep by explicitly telling it to (click Apple icon -> "Sleep") versus inactivity. If you explicitly put the MacBook to sleep through the Apple icon the dock will show an orange status LED (indicating no connection) and the dock will become cool to the touch, if you let it fall inactive the dock will show a green status LED (indicating connection) and the dock will remain warm as if it's in use. Neither state will affect charging or waking; even with an orange status LED it's still treated as if connected to the charger and you can still wake it up by hitting any key on the keyboard or pressing any mouse button. Obviously if you want to save electricity you'd want to explicitly put it to sleep. I noticed even if you explicitly put it to sleep the orange status LED will turn green for a minute here and there, some kind of waking going on but returns to orange for most of the time. 🤔 The "System Information" shows its state as "Not Charging: Desktop Mode" once it's at the 80% charge limit and nothing funny happens with the charge cycle count either, in case you're like me and worried some charging issue with the dock will cause extra cycles and wear on the battery. The charge cycle count in "System Information" was at "9" when I started using the dock around January 2025, it's at "11" today (1/19/26), so a whole two cycles of charge for an entire year, those charge cycles were all due to MacOS charging to 100% either to fix the SOC estimation drift or due to power outages. 🤔 The "System Information" app shows that the charging wattage is 85W which correctly matches Belkin's claim. It also shows this dock in the Thunderbolt section which is why it works well with dual displays, other docks show up in the USB-C section because they're USB-C docks, not Thunderbolt. 🤔 The Belkin Thunderbolt 4 docks would likely have met all of my requirements as well, but they cost more and have fewer ports. Read more

Sometimes, when you find what you are looking for, there is just no need to wait to write the review. That's how I feel this morning. This hub is exactly what I needed. It's small — but not too small. It has all the ports I need — and it was so easy to set up. The price is nice for a thunderbolt hub — which makes it all the better. It's Belkin — so odds are it will last me for a long time. I would like to address a few things from other reviews: 1) Although a power brick is never a cherished accessory, this one isn't all that bad. Yes, it's bigger than one would hope for — but no larger than any of the rest. If you need a powered hub, it's perfectly fine. 2) One reviewer said he received an open box. That's interesting. The box I received was wrapped and sealed for mailing in an Amazon plastic mailer bag — with a label for my name and address on it. THEN, it was placed inside an Amazon box for delivery — with another label, etc. I wonder why. Back to the open box, my unit did have a torn sealing label — like someone had used a knife to gently gain access to the box. As far as I can tell, nothing had been disturbed in the box, though. It seems to be fine — but I do wonder why people are slitting the labels. 3) I'm sure the person who wrote in their review that the unit they received had a white front and back panel. Of course, that is removable. It's there to protect the finish of the hub. It's not the easiest thing to peel off — but it does come off — revealing what each of the ports are. Read more

Updated 1/10/22: (lowered to 1 star) If you're using this with a Mac and a Gigabit wired ethernet connection, you're not going to get Gigabit speeds. I'm seeing more like 250Mbps. Interestingly, when I compare this dock with Belkin's USB-C to Gigabit adapter, their USB-C adapter works great. See the throughput tests in the pictures. I'm going back and forth with tech support, but I'm not optimistic. Update 12/3/21: (lowered to 3 stars) I'm now using this with an M1Max 14" MBP. In short, it's still working. Both 4K monitors work great and power delivery is fine. I don't think it does fast charging through the USB-C port like you get from the MagSafe 3 connector, but that's an Apple limitation. Also note that this is Thunderbolt 3 and the new M1 MacBook Pros are Thunderbolt 4. So we're not getting fully Thunderbolt 4 speeds. Practically speaking, I don't think this matters much. --> After over a year of use, one weird issue that I've noticed on both my old mac and my new mac is that sometimes peripheral USB devices connected to the doc don't reconnect after I plug the thunderbolt cable back into the laptop. It happens when I disconnect and reconnect the laptop. I have a USB audio interface that just uses MacOS's core audio drivers, e.g. no 3rd party driver, so if anything it's a mac driver issue. Or it's an issue with the dock itself. To fix the problem, I have to unplug the USB audio interface from the dock and plug it back in. I've lowered the review to 3 stars, because this limitation makes the dock frustrating to use. But I don't know if this is a Mac issue or a Dock issue. Original: I plugged it in, and it worked immediately and flawlessly, which I'm honestly surprised by given the reviews here. My setup: I have two 27" 4k LG monitors with USB-C interfaces (as well as HDMI and DisplayPort interfaces). I've been running them straight to my 2018 MBP 13" using USB-C. The LG monitors are gorgeous, but the MacBook forgets which monitor is which regularly, meaning that it swaps which monitor is on the left and which one is on the right. This is super annoying, and I hate it. Despite the terrible reviews for this hub, I figured it'd try this. My MBP has 4 Thunderbolt 3 plugs, and this hub indicates that it supports 4k at 60 Hz for two displays when using Thunderbolt 3. Well, as I said, I plugged everything in and it just worked. One monitor uses the USB-C Thunderbolt on the back of the hub. The other monitor uses the DisplayPort plug. I have 3 USB-A peripherals plugged into the back of the hub, all of which require full power to run. My webcam runs through the USB-C monitor's USB-A hub on the back of the monitor, and that works fine, too! The Gig-E ethernet plug passes my network speed test. I've tried the front USB 3.1 plugs and the SD Card reader, and they work. I haven't tried the mic jack yet. So far, it just works, and even better, the Mac doesn't forget which monitor is which. The only complaint I have so far is that the hub gets really hot, so I worry about long-term reliability. 4 stars for now until I see how it lasts. For those of you having problems, I'm not surprised. My experience with multi-monitor hubs is that they are very temperamental to system and monitor combinations. I don't really know why, but I've abandoned several over the years. You basically just have to try them out and return them if they don't work. I'll update the review after I run this for a few months, and after I run this with Big Sur. Read more