 The TS3 Lite from CalDigit is one of the first Thunderbolt 3 docks on the market, allowing you to break free from your dongle bondage, promising a single cable solution to easily transform your laptop into a workstation, something we do at our office all the time, without sacrificing one of your highly coveted Thunderbolt 3 ports. But can it deliver on these promises? And at $200, could it possibly be worth it? Let's find out, shall we? The Masterkeys Pro keyboard lineup from Cooler Master is available in three sizes, each in white or RGB flavors. Check them out at the link below. The relentless onward march of technology can sometimes leave us stranded with legacy gadgets. The TS3 Lite attempts to both solve the problem of adapting a newer physical USB standard to your older devices, and, thanks to Thunderbolt, restore the ports that we've given up for the sake of thinner and lighter devices, without compromising performance. So it's equipped with one USB Type-C and two Type-As, a Gigabit Ethernet port, audio out and in, and one DisplayPort 1.2 port. Of course, it also sports two Thunderbolt 3 ports, though it should be noted that one of them will always be occupied. It's used to connect the device to your Windows or Mac PC with no manual driver installation required. That's a fair bit of I.O. by today's standards. But is it enough to let you ditch your dongles? I guess that depends on your needs, really. Let's start with the good things. The USB ports all operate at the USB 3.1 Gen 1 5Gbps transfer speed, so we saw real-world speeds of 300 to 350 MBps on our Angelbird SSDs, ample for a modern external single SSD, but it should be noted that if you were to use a high-end external drive that relies on RAID for increased speeds over USB 3.10 Gigabit, you may experience some bottlenecking on these ports. The good news, though, is that the Thunderbolt 3 port, really is a very cool connector, can operate at USB 3.10 Gig, as long as you don't need it for additional Thunderbolt devices or a second DisplayPort monitor. Now onto the mediocre. It only has two Type-A ports, a number easily eaten up by a keyboard and mouse, unless you want to dongle your dongle. It also lacks an SD card reader, and we're on to the sub-medio kernel. The audio ports are nice to have, but they should really be on the front, in my opinion, and they introduce an impermissible hiss, which is a no-go for anyone who wants to listen to music at low volume. But hold on a minute. That dongle roundup you did recently had what seemed to be some much cheaper solutions that offered pretty similar functionality. Some of them even had SD ports. So why should I spend more than 70 bucks? Well, the answer is that as great as this thing is, it's not Thunderbolt 3 compliant, and that means no DisplayPort. So it's not capable of driving a 5K monitor or dual 4K monitors, and in fact is even limited to 30 Hz operation for a single 4K monitor. The TS3 Lite handles all of these scenarios at 60 Hz, as long as your OCD can handle potentially needing two different cable types in order to achieve it. And what about that extra Thunderbolt 3 port? Does that make the TS3 Lite worth the price of admission? Well, maybe. But I would make the argument that it's most valuable if your machine only has one Thunderbolt 3 port. Being able to daisy-chain up to six Thunderbolt devices gives you a lot of groovy options, though this does fall apart a little when you consider that most devices with only one Thunderbolt 3 port also have other I.O., decreasing the need for the TS3 Lite's other ports. And, I mean, let's say your machine does have multiple Thunderbolt 3 ports, like the 2016 MacBook Pro, well then you could easily just plug in a dongle for your peripherals and a second cable for your monitor when you sit down. So maybe then the best argument to be made for the TS3 Lite is that it's a one-cable solution! Being able to take your laptop around the office for meetings, then plunk it down quickly at your desk, that's great! Except, it's not quite all kitty-cats and tacos in this area either. You still have to plug in your wall charger, because even though the TS3 Lite comes with a honkin' power brick, it only pushes 15 watts over the Type-C connector, enough to charge your phone and probably operate your computer, but not enough to charge your computer. This is especially a drag if you have a monitor that will charge your MacBook through its USB Type-C port, like LG's UltraFine 5K or 4K27UD88, because you'll actually lose that capability if you're running through the dock. Which come to think of it, some of these monitors actually have a decent amount of their own I.O., so maybe a USB Type-C monitor with a dongle hanging off the back of it is a better one-cord solution right now. Though with that said, CalDigit does have an upcoming non-Lite version that will charge your machine if you're not ready to invest in a new monitor. So we want to hear about it in the comments. What is your setup like? Is USB-C enough for you? Is Thunderbolt a cool solution looking for a problem? Or are you already on your way to Amazon to buy a TS3 Lite right now? Let us know. So thanks for watching, guys. 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