Lenovo is the latest company to launch an external graphics dock that lets you add a desktop-class graphics card to your laptop or PC just by plugging it into a Thunderbolt 3 port.

But the new Lenovo Thunderbolt 3 Graphics Dock is a bit more svelte than most of the products in this category that I’ve seen… and it also has something most others lack: a graphics card.

The good news is that if you spend $399 on this dock, you don’t need to spend more money to buy a graphics card. The bad news is that the card it comes with isn’t all that fancy.

The dock comes with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 card, which Lenovo says is good enough to power a Windows Mixed Reality headset with refresh rates up to 90 Hz.

But if you want a high-end gaming card, this isn’t the graphics dock for you.

The dock measures about 9.8″ x 5.1″ x 0.9″ and weighs about 1.4 pounds. It has a metal case and features two USB 3.0 ports and a USB 2.0 port so it functions as a USB hub as well as a graphics dock. There are also two DisplayPort 1.3 ports and an HDMI 2.0 port, a Gigabit Ethernet port, and a headset jack.

In other words, you could wire up a keyboard, mouse, external storage, and up to three displays and leave the dock on your desk. When you want to game, just plug it into your laptop. When you want to go, just unplug your laptop and leave everything else behind.

You can also theoretically use it to charge your laptop if you’ve got a supported model that charges via a USB Type-C connector.

It’s a somewhat attractive idea. It’d just be nice if it were upgradable in case you’re satisfied with the GTX 1050 graphics card today, but think you might want to replace it in a year or two and don’t want to have to buy a new card and dock.

via Tom’s Hardware 

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8 replies on “Lenovo Thunderbolt 3 Graphics Dock with NVIDIA GTX 1050 graphics coming soon for $399”

  1. Didn’t someone else also make a similar eGPU as this? I forgot who it was but I think it was also compact like this one but had like a NVidia 940M or some other mobile NVidia GPU in it and was cheaper too. Anybody remember what it was or am I imagining things lol?

    1. Nvm I found it, apparently it was Acer that made a similar graphics dock but had a GTX 960M in it instead so nowhere near as powerful and it was apparently quite pricey too.

  2. This is a great device but it’s a little too pricey. I want to get one to use for my Intel Skull Canyon NUC which does have a Thunderbolt port on it and should support external graphics docks saving me a lot of money instead of buying that newer Haydes Canyon NUC. If the price of this Lenovo dock were to drop by at least $100, I’d probably consider buying it. The Iris Pro 580 is pretty decent and can surprisingly handle modern games pretty well considering it’s an Intel GPU so a GTX 1050 should be more than sufficient to suit my PC gaming needs.

    1. You can’t put anything more beefy in there. There’s not enough electricity and cooling. A down clocked GTX 1060-3GB is probably the limit. So, the only issue then is not the product but the price. Around US$120 it would be priced fairly.

      If you want something like a GTX 1070 Ti, you need a bigger psu and decent Active Cooling.
      Then a US$499 price would seem sane (given the necessary changes).

    1. Yeah the GTX 1050 normally runs for an average of about $150 though you can certainly find several versions for less than that. Basically this dock itself costs $250 which is a pretty high premium.

      1. Thunderbolt 3 docks are very expensive in general, some of them cost 300$ without any graphics. 400$ is a very good price, you will not find anything cheaper.

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