Microsoft’s new Surface Dock tosses the proprietary port, uses Thunderbolt 4
Enlarge / The new Thunderbolt 4 version of Microsoft's Surface Dock. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)
Microsoft is introducing a new version of its Surface Dock, the first to rely on Thunderbolt 4 instead of Microsoft's proprietary Surface Connect port. The Microsoft Surface Thunderbolt 4 Dock costs $300 ($40 more than the regular price of the previous-generation Surface Dock 2) and is available starting today.
The new dock measures 5.91×2.95×0.84 inches—a bit flatter, wider, and deeper than the Dock 2—and includes a total of three USB-C/Thunderbolt 4 ports, three 5Gbps USB-A ports, a 2.5Gbps Ethernet port, and a headphone jack. The dock can provide up to 96 W of power to a connected laptop, which should be sufficient to power most laptops that charge over USB-C.
Microsoft only advertises compatibility with its own products, but because it uses Thunderbolt 4, the dock should work with most devices that include USB-C or Thunderbolt ports, including most PC laptops and MacBooks (though we don't know whether macOS includes drivers for its built-in Ethernet port, and the number of external displays supported may depend on how many your MacBook natively supports). Microsoft says laptops with plain USB-C ports can drive a single 4K display at 60 Hz, whereas driving two 4K displays at 60 Hz requires Thunderbolt.