Microsoft announced $299.99 for the Surface Thunderbolt 4 Dock – Surface

At $299.99 in the US, the Surface Thunderbolt 4 Dock plugs into a single USB-C connector instead of a dedicated Surface Connect connector. Microsoft plans to continue selling the Surface Dock 2, which plugs into the Surface Connect connector and is designed for Surface devices that don’t have a connector that uses the USB-C or Thunderbolt 4 standard.

Also for the first time, the new Surface Thunderbolt 4 Dock supports devices/computers other than Surface series PCs. With support for the Thunderbolt 4 protocol, data transfer speeds of up to 40Gbps and 96W charging are supported.

On the front, there is a USB-C port along with a USB-A port but no SD card reader as we have seen on other similar devices. On the other side of the Surface Thunderbolt 4 Dock are two USB-C ports, two USB-A ports, a 2.5Gb Ethernet port, an audio jack, and a Kensington lock slot.

While the launch of the Surface Thunderbolt 4 Dock doesn’t mark the immediate end of the Surface Connect port, Microsoft is clearly headed in that direction. Recent Surface devices from Microsoft such as the Surface Laptop 5 and Surface Pro 9 have two USB-C ports that support Thunderbolt 4 and a dedicated Surface Connect port.

It is very likely that a Surface device will be announced in the near future that will not have a Surface Connect connector in favor of a highly flexible USB-C standard (and this is not the first time this has happened, as the Surface 3 only had a micro USB charging port and not a Surface Connect connector custom). Recall that Microsoft first adopted the USB-C (or USB Type-C) standard in a Surface family device with the introduction of the Surface Pro 7 in 2019. Two years later, the Surface Pro 8 was also released with Thunderbolt support.