One dock to rule them all? Over the past decade there's been a concerted move into making laptops thinner and lighter whilst not skimping on everyday performance. Ultrabooks and MacBooks have led the way, shoehorning potent CPUs inside chassis weighing not much more than a kilo and measuring just 15mm thick. Such portability and sleekness inevitably brings certain compromises along the way, with a lack of ports and connectors of primary concern to those wishing to use their laptops as effective desktop replacements.

Here is where one connectivity technology offers bags of potential for expanding the usefulness of portable machines: Thunderbolt 3. The latest standard provisions 40Gbps of bandwidth, per port, which can be used over USB-C to provide power, multi-display bandwidth, device charging capability, and connectivity throughput for Ethernet and USB. Phew. Best of all, this jamboree is provided by a single cable from laptop to end device.