Satechi Thunderbolt 4 Slim Pro Hub review: solid but niche

Best prices today: Satechi Thunderbolt 4 Slim Hub Pro

$199.99

We think most people will prefer a full-featured Thunderbolt dock. But if you want to save a little money and space for a Thunderbolt 4 hub that splits the Thunderbolt connection into four outputs, Satechi’s Thunderbolt 4 Slim Pro Hub is a solid choice.

As with Ugreen products, this is another case where manufacturers inexplicably fail to get their names straight: on the box, it’s the Thunderbolt 4 Slim Pro Hub. On the Satechi website, it is the Thunderbolt 4 Slim Hub Pro. On Amazon, it’s the Satechi Thunderbolt 4 Hub Slim Pro. At least the model number is consistent: ST-HT4SHM.

Fortunately, there’s a very simple way to think about the Thunderbolt 4 Slim Pro Hub: it’s the older brother of the Satechi Thunderbolt 4 Slim Hub, a compact Thunderbolt hub with a 65W charger. This Pro version has a power bank. 95W power supply, and Amazon at least sells the Slim Pro Hub for the same price as the Slim Hub. Simple, right?

If you’ve been following our reviews, we admit to a bias: We like hubs and docks with display ports available, so you don’t have to pay extra in time or money to order a USB-C cable to Thunderbolt qualified HDMI. The only display outputs included in this hub are the upstream Thunderbolt 4 ports, so you’ll either need to fork out about £15/$15 extra for the right cable (I own and recommend these Uni cables), or have one of the small but growing number of USB-C displays feature a USB-C or Thunderbolt input (not output!) port.

This review informs our continued recommendations for the best Thunderbolt 4 and USB4 hubs and docks chart.

Otherwise, this hub is simple: there’s a 10Gbps USB-A port on the front for a mouse or keyboard, alongside the Thunderbolt 4 port downstream. On the back, there are four Thunderbolt ports, perfect for hanging a USB-C dongle and charging a smartphone with a rated 15W charging power. And that’s it, except for a small LED power.

Mark Hachman / IDG

So why buy this hub? Her size. A bit smaller than 5.5×3 inches, this hub fits nicely in a backpack, and the charging brick – normally the most unsightly part of a hub or powered dock – measures approximately 4.75 × 2 inches, plus a bit for cords. (Amazon customers complain that the charger is larger than the hub, but that’s not the case.)

For me, it’s small enough to qualify as a travel product, and Satechi even includes a pair of inexpensive plastic zip bags for storage. Yes, the chassis is aluminum, which helps keep the hub cool, but the dock only weighs 0.53 pounds – that’s not too bad.

And that’s this dock in a nutshell. Since it’s a Thunderbolt 4 hub, each rear port offers Thunderbolt connectivity, meaning you have the choice of using each one to drive a display (up to 4K, 60Hz per port ) via a direct cable, or connect one of our recommended ports. USB-C docking stations to provide the I/O flexibility (SD card slots, for example) that this Satechi hub forgoes. This makes the whole thing rather unsightly, but it’s possible.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Note that this dock doesn’t include a dedicated smartphone charging port, but each upstream Thunderbolt port provides enough power that this won’t be an issue. Oddly enough, though, one Thunderbolt port delivered 7.8W, while the others topped out at or near 8.95W. That’s still enough to quickly charge a smartphone, but the gap is a bit confusing.

The front-mounted USB-A port was too close to the downstream Thunderbolt port to allow reading with our USB multimeter, and the close port placement is a bit unnecessary and annoying. Otherwise, I/O performance was good.

We measured the dock transmitting 78W of power to our test laptop, which seems about right: the dock will still take some power for itself. The cable measures 2 feet 7 inches – a comfortably long length.

Here is the decision you will have to make. If you need Thunderbolt 4 niche hub like the Thunderbolt 4 Slim Pro Hub, okay – there are other Thunderbolts, cheaper and more complete docks available in our recommendations list, but buy what you need.

However, you can save around £50/$50 with our recommended Thunderbolt 4 hub, which (at press time) is the Pluggable 5-in-1 Thunderbolt Hub. It’s basically the exact same thing, with one exception: Plugable’s hub only comes with a 60W charger, while Satechi’s offers 95W.

Remove the charger from your laptop and see if you can find how many watts it draws: If it’s a 45W device, buy the Plugable. But if you have a more powerful laptop that charges from the USB-C port, you should consider this hub instead.

This review was originally published on PCWorld.