MINI TESTS
front of the fascia to get full access to the card reader slots, which slide into place easily. We tried the dock on a 2017 MacBook Pro 15in and also the latest Mac Studio with a pair of Mac Studio displays – the reader was fast and never missed a beat. If you want to ingest several of the same card simultaneously then you could buy more of those readers. Buying the dock and four readers does hike the price up fairly significantly – close to a grand if you choose the more expensive models – but you’re not having to buy a separate Thunderbolt dock. Sandisk also recently unveiled its Pro-Blade series – NVMe SSD drives that can slide into a custom dock. It’s a shame these don’t go into the Pro-
Dock 4 – it would be a neat solution. Maybe an adapter is on the cards. On the subject of cards, as well as Lexar, Sony and Prograde Digital, we tried a range of Sandisk Extreme Pro cards – which are very fast. This included the 128GB CFexpress Type B, 512GB CFast 2.0, 128GB CF and 256GB micro SD and SDXC. The micro SD and SD cards offered by Sandisk are the UHS-I spec, as is the card reader. Of course, the reader will work with UHS-II cards but only at the lower UHS-I speed. However, Sandisk’s latest micro SD and SD cards now enable read speeds of 200MB/s – which makes them the fastest UHS-I and micro SD cards you can buy. Being class I, they’re more affordable too, with a 64GB UHS-I SD card priced at £20/$16. Whether that’s something which concerns anyone who’d consider spending around a grand on a fully loaded Sandisk Professional Pro-Dock 4 is another debate. PRO MOVIEMAKER RATING: 8/10 A fast Thunderbolt dock and card reader station Pros: Good build quality, fast transfer speeds Cons: No CFexpress Type A or SD UHS-II readers
PUSH FIT Individual card reader modules (left) slot into the main body (above)
SPECIFICATIONS
Ports: 2x USB-C, 2x USB-A, 2x Thunderbolt, 1x RJ45 Ethernet, 1x DisplayPort 1.4 Audio: 3.5mm headphone/mic combo jack Host connection: USB-C/ Thunderbolt 3 Powered connection: 87W OS compatibility: MacOS, Windows Dimensions (wxhxd): 208x155x115mm/8.2x6.1x4.5in Weight: 2.3kg/5.1lb
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