Sonnet Echo Express SE1 Thunderbolt 3 Expansion Chassis

Does exactly what it says on the tin, allows use of a PCIe card with a daughter board. Be aware, there is a difference between _Thunderbolt 2_ and _Thunderbolt 3_. Thunderbolt 2 is a squareish connector. Thunderbolt 3 shares form with the USB-C connector and has extra functionality on top of USB-C, and is thin and wide with rounded edges, also reversible. This is a TB3 dock. They also sell a different TB2 enclosure which looks the same other than the ports at the back. It says that external graphics cards are not supported, but they sell a separate GPU dock for that. This is most likely due to the huge power draws for graphics cards. This has a small fan, but it's fairly quiet and for the tech handy can be replaced. The slot type is PCIe, not the old PCI standard (but adapters exist). It has 2 ports for the intended Thunderbolt passthrough, a premium over many TB products that only has a single port and have to form the end of a chain. Sonnet has a very useful compatibility chart on their website showing a mass of PCIe cards they have tested. showing the compatibility is very high. This is something I strongly appreciated, as Thunderbolt is a rather messy technology and there has been a string of poor and crashy implementations and docks. Build quality is good and light weight, made for standing on a desk, not really flimsy but not built like a tank either. On par with an external hard drive, definitely portable but I would be careful with it. Swapping out the card does take a minute as you have to unscrew the feet. For several cards I would get their 3-card enclosure, but that's also 3x the price. I bought this for use with an UAD-2 card in Pro Tools, and it works great. I did a lot of research beforehand and it seems to be the best and safest for what it does.

Works like a dream.