I’m sure someone has a need for this. No matter how many ports, I cannot imagine paying >$99 for a dock/hub. Maybe if it had a backup battery built-in, e.g. $149 for this dock if it had 100 Wh power bank built-in.
Our First-Ever Docking Station is Here!
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$99 was also the number I had in mind, but that would take some kind of black friday deal and some other coupon
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I can’t figure it out, why not have a full power static tower system at home with all the ports you need via any necessary expansion cards, and a light portable battery-friendly device and just store data on cloud or USB-C storage…
Anything with few ports is for a reason, it’s thin and light so can’t really be that powerful, so it’s not going to be fast for media processing, so why would then use a dock for high bandwidth for large media applications?
I prefer a self-built NAS for my data files but for me file of a couple of GB is large and the most I do is a ffmpeg video recoding (typically to h265 to save storage space and hence network bandwidth).
I get the fact of docking, you want ideally one cable to HDMI, Power in (PD) , USB-C 3.2 for large drive, USB A x2 for keyboard+mouse. But I can’t figure the person who has both a portable device with few ports and wants all this performance in a dock.
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From the official press release:
Anker is expected to launch more peripherals with Thunderbolt 3 technology later this year as it continues to expand its productivity offerings for USB-C laptops, including MacBooks, and PCs that are compatible with Thunderbolt 3.
I’d also expect GaN to come in to hubs keep the size down. To make a truly innovative hub you’d have to add a switch to have hub-based routing which adds heat and which calls for shrinking.
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Ooh, I like it!
Didn’t say which year… but I can see the trajectory.
If you take in 100W, that has to be 20V (everything 60W upwards is 20V) but it you fan out the power to Type A and a few 3.1 and PD, you necessarily force different voltages, that forces a DC-DC conversion (heat) which forces either a big hub with cooling vents, or GaN.
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A lot of people don’t want desktop computers. They just have one notebook computer or even multiple notebook computers. I worked at several tech startups, and this seemed to be the norm. So if they had many peripherals, then they would want a hub/dock that would accommodate them.
But back to the price. $299? I really don’t get it. This is a couple steps up from the 7-in-1 hub, ok.
I really feel like I’m missing something.
You’re missing the Barnum phase.
That’s when people willing to pay the price do so, then they underwrite the product development cost and a year or so later it drops significantly in cost.
For any price, there is a time you get it.
Fully understand the wish to not have desktop computers (I don’t like them), but there is a specific inherent conflict with Thunderbolt3 and a hub. Thunderbolt3 advantage is a higher bitrate throughput, that saves real time dealing with copying very large files frequently. That would involve similarly a large fast SSD, a very fast CPU and plenty of RAM. Those make heat. Heat means a fan, a fan means you must have the height in the laptop to push the air through, which means you have the space to put multiple ports.
I therefore suggest the people with a device which so few ports to want a hub, don’t need a Thunderbolt3 hub as a slower one will be just as fast. I am not challenging hubs, but these fast hubs.
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Nice idea but I would need a discount bigger than one that would ever be offered to convince myself to buy it. I was thinking $99 was probably the most I would be willing to spend for that so I guess I’ll either wait for the price to come down or just stick with cheaper options out there
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Looks amazing Cant wait!
The launch time for the UK will be the end of June 
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This price point is not competitive. Dell has a higher specs dock (wd19tb) listed at $350, but already on sale down to $275. And others and many competitors are even cheaper.
I had anticipated $200, and hoped for under $150 to be really compelling and disruptive. But this pricing puts it in a very crowded space where it will be about justifying and balancing required features and support. For the same price, I think the Dell has better features. This is more compact, but is also going to be sitting on a desk, not traveling with me.
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If you’re correct then the price will just fall to match. Stock won’t sell if over-priced and if you’re correct on spec vs price then implies manufacturing cost is considerably lower.
It’s people paying a high price, which causes the high price. Sit on your money and price falls.
Anker deliberately creates an inflated launch price, to then almost immediately discount 20% so then when they do a 50% discount it looks amazing. Also note that many ways of listing items is based on discount, so a higher launch price, to get a higher discount %, gets you nearer top of searches.
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You are probably correct. Not a fan of those types of pricing games, but understand why they happen, sadly.
You had already mentioned earlier in this thread your estimate for discounts of 40% by black friday, so maybe by the end of the year we will see this at an attractive price.
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Looks great!
Needs a black option and I am a bit surprised it doesn’t have 10Gig
I would like to know the UK launch date also
something on same lines, having a Fast SSD on this PowerExpand Elite Dock, may 512GB or 1TB would make this much more enticing than what we have. Easy backup / shared storage
Also, I have 2 Monitors, and planning to add a third… this dock only supports 1 monitor, unless I add a USB-C to dual HDMI Splitter … thats another $40 to $50 if I need a quality product… means adding more ding dongs … 
At this price… i would expect at least 2 HDMI connections for the dock
hey @AnkerOfficial … the link for the PowerExpand elite on the main post is opening to Doh ! 404!
can you please look into it?
or may be till Ankerofficial comes online, @ndalby @TechnicallyWell can you guys edit it to point to https://www.anker.com/a8396launch (thanks @Insider)
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This is the correct link.
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