Port authority: Belkin Thunderbolt 2 Express Dock

Review Intel's Thunderbolt interface is the most impressive external I/O you can get on a consumer PC. But as befits a luxury interface, it comes at luxury price. There's a computer in the cable, for a start. All of this means that Thunderbolt's great promise – one cable to carry all your I/O, for easy docking – has been kept out of the reach of the masses by the high cost of producing the equipment.

Making connections: Belkin's Thunderbolt 2 Express Dock

At least these days, the manufacturers of Thunderbolt kit such as Belkin, Elgato, G-Technology, Startech, Western Digital and others have all seen sense and now include a cable (worth £25) with the new devices that they sell. Getting stung for a cable when you've just paid over the odds for a new interfacing technology didn't help spur mass adoption and the previous Belkin Express Dock, still on sale, is guilty of this omission.

Prices have been falling though, and an undeterred Belkin launched its second generation Thunderbolt hub late last year for £250. It's currently listed on its site for £200. So now you can enjoy Thunderbolt 2 speeds, which means it aggregates two 10GB/s channels. This adapts the first gen Thunderbolt spec, which carried two bi-directional 10GB/s channels.

Front panel sockets are a practical change

Although it is compatible with original Thunderbolt gear, you need a host computer or peripherals that support Thunderbolt 2 to get that speed bump. With the former, that means the Apple Retina MacBook Pro (late 2013) and most Macs that followed. For Windows users, the first showing was from Asus with its ThunderboltEX II/DUAL card for its Z87-series motherboard.

The Belkin Thunderbolt 2 Express Dock HD is considerably smaller (30 x 18 x 11cm) than the very first generation Belkin Thunderbolt Express Dock that we reviewed here. It is also lighter at 490g. It loses Firewire 800 and one USB 3.0 port. However, the bulky predecessor contained a groove on the bottom through which you could thread the host cable, which I rather missed. Instead, Belkin has mounted a USB 3.0 port and a combo mic/headphone port on the front.

As it's likely Mac users will be the biggest customer, it's a shame there's no FireWire

Round the back there's Gigabit Ethernet, a headphone output, two USB 3.0 ports, a couple of Thunderbolt 2 interfaces, an HDMI socket with support for 4K video displays and a PSU socket – no host powering here. With only two Thunderbolt ports – one taken up by the host computer – you're expected to daisy chain your Thunderbolt peripherals, which is fine.

However, if you've already invested in a Thunderbolt adapter for FireWire it would have been nice to be able to attach it directly to the hub, rather than hang it off some peripheral Thunderbolt storage, and even then, not all drives have an extra port – you won't find one on host powered Thunderbolt peripherals.