Auf den ersten Blick
Expert's Rating
Pros
- High-quality housing
- Practical layout of the connections
- Fast memory card reader
- Fast interfaces also at the front
Cons
- Connection cable too short
- Rubber feet on the side too small
Our Verdict
Simply beautiful or also a technical highlight? Ugreen has done almost everything right with the Revodok Max 213, fast interfaces in a sensible layout packed inside a high-quality housing.
In terms of price, Ugreen is in line with the competition, but unfortunately also ships it with a short cable.
Price When Reviewed
$399.99
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Retailer Price
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Ugreen packs everything a Mac user needs in terms of interfaces into the new Revodok Max 213 Thunderbolt 4 docking station. And the whole thing is housed in a stylish and high-quality metal casing.
The device costs £399.99 in the UK (available from Amazon) and $399.99 in the US (also available at Amazon US).
Check out more options in our best Thunderbolt 4 and USB4 hubs and docking stations guide.
Features to dream about
There are 13 interfaces in total, sensibly distributed across the front and rear. On the front, there are two USB-A 3.2 and one USB-C 3.2 with 10 GBit/s each. There are also two memory card readers for micro SD and SD of the fast UHS-II SD4.0 version, as well as a 3.5 mm audio socket for a headset. The rear accommodates two USB-A 3.0 ports with 5 GBit/s, a 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet port, a Displayport 1.4 and three Thunderbolt 4 ports with 40 GBit/s.
The USB-A ports on the front deliver a maximum of 1.7 amps and those on the back a maximum of 1.2 amps. The USB-C port on the front is limited to 3 amps, which corresponds to a maximum charging power of 20 watts. It supports Power Delivery.
This means that the connections are so well distributed that you can connect hard drives or fast Thunderbolt 4 drives on the back, for example, as well as one or two monitors. Mobile SSD drives, an iPhone or iPad for charging and a headset for video conferencing or gaming can be connected at the front.
In-use
Two monitors with 4K/60 Hertz are possible under macOS, provided the right Mac is connected. Apple sets the limit here, so the basic CPUs M1 and M2 only support one external monitor on the mobile Macs. The M3 supports two monitors when closed. Only with the Pro and Max M processors are there three monitors together with the Macbook display. Macbooks with Intel CPUs are also supported.
A maximum of 90 watts is available for connection to the Macbook . Unfortunately, Ugreen only supplies a 70 centimetre Thunderbolt 4 cable. This makes flexibility unnecessarily complicated when setting up.
The memory card readers deliver a decent speed. We measured 220 MBit/s when reading with a fast SDXC UHS-II V90 memory card from Angelbird. We measured an identical value for the smaller micro SD memory card reader with a Kingston Canvas React Plus. This puts the memory card reader in the same league as its docking station competitors and, as expected, lags somewhat behind the best external memory card readers.
We were particularly curious about a performance measurement with external drives on the Thunderbolt 4 and USB-C port. We measured the following values with Aja System Test Lite: with the Thunderbolt 3 SSD drive OWC Envoy Pro FX 1267 MBit/s for writing and 2626 MBit/s for reading. With the USB-C drive Lacie Rugged Mini SSD 606 MB/s write and 689 MB/s read. And the USB4 drive from Delock 2427 MBit/s write and 2429 MBit/s read.
As is usual with docking stations, the data transfer rate when writing is significantly lower than when connected directly to the Mac. For technical reasons, the OWC Thunderbolt 3 drive offers around 900 MBit/s less. This is also noticeable with USB-C drives. With the Lacie USB-C drive, this is around 100 MBit/s less when writing and around 200 MBit/s less when reading.
This puts the Revodok Max in line with the competition. The measurement with the USB 4 drive is interesting. Here we only measured around 200 MBit/s lower values for writing and reading than directly on the Mac. This is almost negligible and clearly speaks in favour of using USB4.
We also measured the Revodok Max as a charging station. Here the docking station makes a good impression with 50% with an iPhone 15, 27% with an iPad Pro and 37 per cent with a Macbook Air M1. Measurements were taken after 30 minutes.
Should you buy the Ugreen Revodok Max 213 Thunderbolt 4 docking station?
Thunderbolt 4 makes it possible to integrate many connections into one docking station. The Revodok Max thus joins the now large selection. The high-quality metal housing, which can be set up in both portrait and landscape format, leaves an excellent impression.
The three fast and powerful charging ports on the front are a very positive feature. The performance data is standard on the market, and the Revodok Max does not stand out from the competition here, nor does the price. However, if you are looking for a docking station that perfectly matches the look of your Macbook, you will find it here.
This review originally appeared on Macwelt.
