CalDigit Thunderbolt Station 2: The Best Thunderbolt Dock Gets Even Better!

I’ve owned the original CalDigit Thunderbolt Station since it first shipped in October of 2013. I instantly fell in love with the device with its driverless Mac connectivity and wide array of ports. Having owned a MacBook Pro since 2006, I’d resigned myself to the fact that my Dell days of sliding my Latitude into the docking station and all my peripherals working instantly were gone forever. I used to joke that my MacBook Pro looked like an octopus sitting on my desk with an external hard drive, monitor, network cable, audio out and multiple iOS devices using every available port on the machine. The CalDigit Thunderbolt station reduced the myriad connections to two, the MagSafe power and one Thunderbolt cable right next to it. The Thunderbolt Station handled everything else. Aside from the aesthetic improvement this produced, it greatly reduced the time it took to get my MacBook up and running on my desk.

Well, when CalDigit sent me an email last year announcing their imminent release of the Thunderbolt Station 2 (TS2) with Thunderbolt 2 support and the addition of two eSATA ports, I didn’t hesitate to pre-order one. It wasn’t that I particularly needed the eSATA ports or the increased speed of Thunderbolt 2 (yet), but CalDigit did cure the only beef I had with the original Thunderbolt Station. It took up a bit too much desktop space. The new TS2 is designed to stand vertically, reducing its footprint by a factor of five or six. My new MacBook Pro does have two Thunderbolt 2 ports, but the two external drives I use for backup and media storage are both USB 3 devices so I haven’t experienced any speed increase on either drive (nor did I expect to). I do plan to upgrade my external storage to Thunderbolt in the near future and CalDigit’s T3 RAID is at the top of my list. It’s there because of how well both Thunderbolt Stations have worked for me. I have to believe the same quality extends to all their products. I’ve always been skeptical of hardware vendors’ claims of “zero configuration”, but CalDigit delivers. The total setup for my MacBook Pro consisted of two steps: 1.) plug in the power and 2.) plug in the Thunderbolt cable. That’s it! Everything works and everything I plug into the Thunderbolt Station works without a single visit to the System Preferences app.

Just like its predecessor, the CalDigit Thunderbolt Station 2 delivers true “plug-n-play” configuration, rock-solid performance and reliability. I you’re looking to rid your Mac desktop of an unwieldy octopus, the TS2 is just the ticket.