Review: G-Tech G-Dock ev with Thunderbolt

Pricing

While the G-Dock ev normally lists for $750 at G-Technology.com, it can be purchased for about $170 less on Amazon.

Performance

Ok now that we’ve talked about the aesthetics and connectivity, let’s talk about performance.

Connectivity testing

For our connectivity testing we used a single G-Dock ev and connected either an Apple Cinema Display (24” Mini DisplayPort variety) and a newer HP Z27i monitor, swapping between the two monitors at the end of the daisychain of devices to see if performance of the monitors was compromised in any way by the G-Dock ev in the middle.

Conversely, we were also curious whether data throughput to the G-Dock ev was compromised by another device in the Thunderbolt daisychain of devices.

Our baseline tests were done using the same two monitors connected at the end of a daisychain to a Promise Pegasus R6 RAID 5 Thunderbolt unit. Note that we’re not matching speeds here—it would be an unfair test since the Pegasus R6 has six 2TB drives in a single hardware-based RAID—but rather connectivity to make sure that the full resolution of each monitor passed through the Thunderbolt chain.

We’re happy to report that both the 24” Apple Cinema Display (with a directly attached mini DisplayPort connecter connected to the G-Dock ev) and the 27” HP Z27i monitor (with a mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort cable connected between the Z27i and the G-DOCK EV) were able to pass their full native resolutions with no EDID interference from the G-DOCK EV. This means 1920x1080 and 2560x1440, respectively, for the Cinema Display and the Z27i.