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At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Thunderbolt 5 SSD option RGB options from the busy to ambient Tightly integrated within the Razer ecosystem Clean look with rear-mounted ports Active cooling fan Cons Competition offers the same for about $100 less Power delivery is an issue SSD is currently stuck inside the dock Storage test speeds can be slower than the competition Our Verdict Razer’s Thunderbolt 5 Dock Chroma provides serviceable functionality with Razer’s trademark RGB bling. But this dock commands a sizeable premium, and several problems encourage you to look elsewhere. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Razer Thunderbolt 5 Dock Chroma Retailer Price $399.99 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices Does Razer’s Thunderbolt 5 Dock Chroma provide the same fun RGB sparkle as its predecessor? It does indeed. But serious, cutthroat competition delivers the basics for much less–and some fairly severe issues should give you pause. Razer Thunderbolt 5 Dock Chroma: Configurations Razer’s Thunderbolt 5 Dock ships in two variants: the RGB-equipped “Chroma” version and the “Mercury” option. The Mercury option is plain white and (at press time) costs $389.99 — basically, it’s an aesthetic difference for those who want more vanilla setups. Razer representatives assured me that there would be no functional difference between the two. The only difference is the lack of RGB lighting. Razer Thunderbolt 5 Dock Chroma: Design, ports, installation process Razer’s Thunderbolt 5 dock is an 11-in-1 dock, consisting of three Thunderbolt 5 outputs and one Thunderbolt 5 connection to your laptop. Like others in this Thunderbolt 5 dock generation, Razer has chosen to allow you to buy the necessary cables to connect them to external displays. Depending upon your monitor, you’ll need either USB-C (Thunderbolt) cables capable of the 80Gbps/120Gbps connection that Thunderbolt 5 allows, or else buy the high-speed cables that terminate in a DisplayPort or HDMI connector. (The Thunderbolt 5 connections support DisplayPort 2.1.) Beyond the Thunderbolt 5 ports, the dock includes two 10Gbps USB-C ports, one 10Gbps USB-A port, Gigabit Ethernet, a 3.5mm headphone jack, plus a UHS-II SD slot on the side. A 0.8 meter (31-inch) Thunderbolt 5 cable connects to your laptop. If you’re looking for a slick addition to your PC battlestation, Razer’s Thunderbolt 5 dock will serve. But with some severe faults, most shoppers should look for alternatives. If you’re someone who does like a bit of color on your desktop, however, the Thunderbolt 5 Dock Chroma is an ideal choice. Razer’s dock includes an RGB strip that runs along the underside of the dock, accenting all surfaces except the top and the rear ports. That’s a bit ironic since the rear ports (especially the Thunderbolt 5 connections) are embossed with black-on-black labels, so that I really had to squint (and use a small flashlight) to make out which ports were which. While Microsoft has promised that you’ll be able to manage your PC’s RGB lighting using its Windows 11 Settings, Razer’s Blade 18 laptop — my test bed — includes an app called Synapse which controls the lighting on the Blade as well as peripherals like the Thunderbolt 5 Dock Chroma. Without any RGB, the Razer Thunderbolt 5 Dock Chroma is… boring?Mark Hachman / Foundry The Synapse app is powerful and versatile, and it allows me to configure the dock’s RGB settings from a “Starlight” twinkle to a “Breathing” pulse to waves of color to just a static glow. The last option is the least distracting. Incidentally, Razer also patched out the major RGB vulnerability that exists in most RGB and fan drivers. Otherwise, the Razer Thunderbolt 5 dock is an upgrade over the similar Thunderbolt 4 Dock Chroma, a very good dock priced at $329.99 at press time. Unless you wish to future-proof your desktop, you’re better off buying the older TB4 dock to save a bit of money while still keeping that RGB rizz, as the kids say. A Thunderbolt 5 dock will work with a PC with only Thunderbolt 4 docking ports, but you’ll lose out on the higher-speed Thunderbolt 5 interface that allows for three 4K displays at 144Hz, eGPU capabilities, and more. On the other hand, if you don’t have such a setup, an older TB4 dock is still an option. In addition to the functional differences between the two, however, the two docks are designed differently. The older Thunderbolt 4 dock includes ports on the front and back, while Razer’s designers chose to engineer its latest dock with every single port (save the SD slot) on the rear of the dock. It makes for a nice clean look, if that’s your thing. Otherwise, the dock is made out of anodized aluminum, giving it a bit of a plasticky feel. All told, the dock measures 8.1 x 3.3 by 1.2 inches and weighs 1.15 pounds. The rear of the Razer Thunderbolt 5 Dock Chroma is where the action is: USB-A ports, a USB-C port, the four Thunderbolt 5 ports, and the gigabit Ethernet port as well.Mark Hachman / Foundry There are no “dedicated” charging ports, though the Thunderbolt port supplies 15W (or an actual load of 13.7W, according to my power meter). Dock makers used to advertise a port or two as a “charging port.” That’s been quietly dropped as a feature from most dock makers as the power input that modern smartphones require to fast charge has hit 40W and above. You will see small venting on the short sides, however, since Razer also included an active fan that can kick on under load. Don’t expect to hear it while tapping away on an office document, however. The very quiet fan only turns on during heavier workloads and the dock remained quite cool throughout. I didn’t notice any issues with any of the ports, the SD card slot, or the headphone jack. On one side of the Razer Thunderbolt 5 Dock Chroma is the SD card slot and venting. The dock has an active fan that you’ll barely notice.Mark Hachman / Foundry Razer’s dock also ships with an M.2 SSD slot, which doesn’t come populated with an SSD like the Sonnet Echo 13. That allows you to add storage directly to the dock rather than use an external SSD. (Is this necessary? I’ll address this in the performance section, below.) Adding an SSD could hardly be simpler. Underneath the dock is a plastic cover, which pops off easily but otherwise keeps the SSD secure and apparently free from dust. Attaching the SSD takes a second or two simply to slide into the connector sleeve. You might expect a screw to secure it in place. Instead, the SSD includes a circular notch, which fits over a small cylinder with a small latching mechanism, like the hands of a clock. Simply turn the cylinder a half turn or so to lock the SSD in place. You’ll then need to use the Windows disk management system to format the SSD, which also takes a few seconds. Mark Hachman / Foundry My only problem is that after I successfully inserted the SSD, re-latched the cover, tested it, and attempted to remove the cover for a photo… I couldn’t. Right now, my test SSD is stuck inside Razer’s dock until I force it open or it manages to wiggle free. Big problem! Is the Razer Thunderbolt 5 Dock Chroma one of the best Thunderbolt docks? Let’s find out. Razer Thunderbolt 5 Dock Chroma: Power issues Razer’s Thunderbolt 5 Dock Chroma performed adequately, although not in one scenario. Razer’s Thunderbolt 5 Dock Chroma demonstrated instability within minutes of connecting it to my test PC, the Razer-manufactured Blade 18. I could excuse some flickering when the dock was first plugged in, but it spontaneously disconnected the displays before reconnecting them a short time later. Within a few minutes, Razer’s dock had disconnected again. It continued to show signs of instability. A notification from the laptop (not the dock) when on battery. In this case, there was an excuse: I was accidentally powering the laptop on battery power. The dock supplies only 140W of power to the laptop, not the full rated 240W that the Thunderbolt 5 spec allows for. That’s not unusual, as the other Thunderbolt 5 docks I’ve tested only supported 140W as well. I don’t usually test a dock’s performance on battery power, but it was worth noting that a typical Thunderbolt 4 dock supplies enough power (60 to 90W, on average) to satisfy the needs of the typical business notebook with a Thunderbolt 4 port. Thunderbolt 5 is typically confined to gaming laptops, which can demand up to 400W under load. I didn’t initially mark down the Razer Thunderbolt 5 Dock Chroma because of this, as it’s an unusual scenario. The question, however, is whether the dock displayed any instability while the laptop was connected to power. It did not, but there was a lot of display “panic” when the laptop and dock resumed from sleep: docks turning on and off for several seconds when the laptop resumed from sleep. I saw more of this behavior than on other Thunderbolt 5 docks I’ve tested on the same laptop. Otherwise, the dock’s stability earned a passing grade but that’s all. I’m more concerned about the power delivery to the laptop. Under normal tests, the Razer dock transferred about 85W to the Razer laptop — nothing wrong there. But then I decided to play a PC game to see how much the laptop would draw from the dock. I unplugged the laptop from its power cable and used the dock itself as its only power source. My power meter instantly showed that the power supplied dropped to zero, occasionally spiking to 85W or so again, then dropping off to zero for seconds at a time. A second battery meter reported similar results. The laptop never received 140W, however, which is what the dock is rated for. Windows, of course, complained about a lack of available power. I recorded what I saw and supplied it to Razer, which didn’t deliver an explanation by press time, more than ten days after we contacted them for comment. Razer Thunderbolt 5 Dock Chroma: Performance The dock’s performance was a little slower than its competition. The streaming performance was perfectly fine; the dock dropped 11 frames on one display and 15 frames (out of 10,000) on the other display while streaming a pair of 4K videos at 60Hz. Again, this metric was quite good. Razer’s Synapse app controls the RGB lighting of the Razer Thunderbolt 5 Dock Chroma, which has multiple effects including strobing and “starlight” twinkles. As you can see, more than one color can be displayed at any one time.Mark Hachman / Foundry When transferring data via an attached Thunderbolt 5 SSD, the Razer Thunderbolt 5 Dock Chroma and the SSD reported 396.5MB/s under the PCMark storage test, for a score of 2,654. That’s less than the Sonnet Echo 13 (436MB/s) or the Plugable TBT-UDT3 (437MB/s). While streaming in the background, the performance dropped to 365.1MB/s, versus 402MB/s for the Plugable dock. That’s probably not something that you’ll feel in real-world applications, but it’s still a tad slower. Copying a basket of more than 30GB of video and other files from the SSD through the dock to the desktop took 18.6 seconds, or 19.3 seconds while streaming. Again, that’s about two seconds slower than the competition. I also tested the dock using a 2TB Crucial P310, a PCIe 4 SSD. Here the dock showed its worth: 423.08MB/s from the internal SSD using PCMark’s tests, with a slight drop to 415.09 MB/s while streaming. The folder copy completed in a blistering 16.08 seconds, or 18 seconds while streaming. The basic PCMark score increased just 7 percent from using an external PCIe 5 SSD to a slightly slower (and cheaper) PCIe 4 M.2 SSD. By comparison, that’s much faster than Sonnet’s internal SSD, which delivered data at 279.8MB/s, a 51 percent increase. Clearly, the interface as well as the speed of the SSD matters, but that’s performance to think about, too. For gamers, a high-speed external SSD makes a difference, and it’s a positive mark for Razer’s dock. Razer Thunderbolt 5 Dock Chroma: Conclusion I wouldn’t, and that’s not entirely Razer’s fault. Most of it is, however. In the middle of this review, Intel — whose chips power about 80 percent of the laptop market — revealed that its 2026 laptop platform, the Core Ultra Series 3 or “Panther Lake” — will only support Thunderbolt 4 natively, or Thunderbolt 5 with the addition of a separate, discrete chip. That tells me that most 2026 laptops will support Thunderbolt 4 instead, not 5. That’s a strike against this dock. Thunderbolt 5, then, will be reserved for gaming laptops. But Razer markets itself as “for gamers.” If that’s the case, I expect the dock would work acceptably under a gaming scenario, which it didn’t. Somewhere along the line — between the combination of Razer’s test laptop and its dock — the power delivery didn’t, well, deliver. I did like this dock under normal operation. It performed perfectly acceptably, and aside from clearer labels for the ports, was a solid dock. Adding an M.2 slot is a nice touch… but if you can’t get the SSD free for a future upgrade, what good is it? With all that said, I would consider alternatives. Plugable’s 11-in-1 Thunderbolt 5 (TBT-UDT3) docking station is functionally identical to Razer’s dock (again, without RGB), is priced $100 less, and runs a bit faster. We’ve reviewed a handful of Thunderbolt 5 docks as part of our recommendations for the best Thunderbolt docks, and our roundup is a good place to start. I thought Razer’s Thunderbolt 4 Dock Chroma was surprisingly good! But this Thunderbolt 5 update falls short between its power instability, high price, and unclear labeling. Read...

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At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Epic battery life, unmatched in the industry Solid cleaning performance Dazzling red paint job looks more like a Corvette than a pool janitor Operational mode options to handle most environments Cons Very expensive App and onboard controls need a makeover Must be retrieved via pole and hook Our Verdict iGarden’s latest pool robot has the best longevity of any robot we’ve reviewed, but its price tag  complicates a buying decision. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: iGarden Pool Cleaner K Pro 150 Retailer Price Check Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices “Set it and forget it” is something of a moving target in the world of robotic pool cleaners. While a few models have exceptional battery life—a bit more than six hours being about the best I’ve seen—many die after just a couple of hours in the water, requiring immediate retrieval and recharging. Even a six-hour runtime won’t get you very far. That’s just three two-hour scrubbings—not even a week of running time if you clean every other day. The iGarden K Pro 150 changes all that, and the underwater battery race is formally on: With a running time that easily stretches beyond 10 hours, you will not find another robot with this kind of lifespan on the market. And very few with a price tag this high. (I’m looking at you, Beatbot AquaSense 2 Ultra). The iGarden K Pro 150 ran for a full 10 hours—significantly longer than the 8.5 hours the manufacturer claims. Specifications The battery is the centerpiece here: The K Pro 150 contains a massive 14,100mAh (14.1Ah) cell that dwarfs anything else you’ll find on the market. Even iGarden’s long-lived K60, which we recently reviewed, tops out at 7,500mAh (which is good for 6.5 hours of operation). The iGarden K Pro 150’s onboard control panel is arcane and far from intuitive.Christopher Null/Foundry While the K Pro 150’s physical design is the same as the K60—with large wheels, thin treads, and a race car-inspired industrial design—it’s the new paint job that will really turn heads. It immediately drew attention from visitors who spotted it either in or out of the pool during my testing. The bright red color scheme is unlike anything else in the business, which is dominated by blue or black color schemes If nothing else, it will be interesting to see if other manufacturers start experimenting with more exciting colors going forward. At 24 pounds, the K Pro 150 isn’t overly enormous or heavy, and it features the same touchscreen control panel as the K60. It also works in the same fashion with the iGarden Robotics app while it’s within Bluetooth range (i.e. only when it’s not in the pool). Charging is courtesy of a small power brick that attaches to a front-mounted charging port (more on this later), and retrieval must be done with a hook (included) and pole. The K Pro 150’s debris basket is large but, as with the K60, awkwardly shaped. This makes cleanup more tedious than with other robots, though only slightly more so. Installation and setup The iGarden app is not much more useful than the onboard control panel; fortunately, you probably won’t need to use it much.Christopher Null/Foundry Aside from unboxing, initial charging (which can take up to 9 hours), and a simple onboarding with the iGarden app, there’s nothing much to set up. You’ll need to read the manual thoroughly, however: As with the K60, the K Pro 150’s control panel is arcane and far from intuitive, and you’ll want to have those instructions handy for your initial runs (and then probably for some time after). Note that as obtuse as the control panel is, the app interface isn’t really any better, and since the app doesn’t offer any real extras (even the battery meter is very basic, offering just three broad levels of remaining charge: low, medium, and high) there’s not much to be gained from using it. Using the iGarden Pool Cleaner K Pro 150 The iGarden Pool Cleaner K Pro 150’s debris basket fits inside this bay.Christopher Null/Foundry The K Pro 150 has such a big battery that I really needed to plan well to test it properly, so that I was awake for both the start and finish of each run. For my first test, I charged the robot overnight and dropped it into the pool in the morning, putting it on its highest-coverage mode that cleans floor, walls, and waterline (my standard operating mode). The bot ran for a full 10 hours—even longer than the 8.5 hours iGarden claims for this mode. iGarden specifies a 15-hour “maximum” running time, but this is only for floor-only runs, which use less power. When I tested the robot in floor-only mode, I almost got there, achieving an uninterrupted running time just shy of 14 hours. The robot is, of course, not really designed to be used in such a way, because it’s effective at cleaning the pool much more quickly than running for half the day. (It’s also a much better overall cleaner than the K60 was in my tests.) I next set out to find how long it took for the K Pro 150 to effectively clean the pool. With a synthetic leaf test, the robot picked up 90 percent of the testing debris within 90 minutes, 98 percent within 3 hours, and it fully cleaned the pool after about 6 hours (including some tough debris stuck in the corner that I didn’t think it would ever get). The hours beyond that were just gravy. The filter basket itself has multiple chambers, which renders it a bit difficult to clean.Christopher Null/Foundry Instead of running the robot until the battery dies each time, the smarter move is to use the “AI Timer” feature, though this is perhaps the most frivolous usage of the term “AI” I’ve encountered. A better name for this feature would simply be “Timer,” as it simply lets you specify automatic, repeating runs every 24-, 48-, or 72 hours after your initial running cycle. With this feature activated, you should be able to get five 2-hour cleaning runs out of the robot. With 48-hour repeat runs, that’s a solid 10 days of operation before you need to recharge it (assuming the filter basket doesn’t get full before then). While the control panel is busy, the only other function of note on it is the Turbo Mode feature, which basically just sets the robot to move faster in the water, which will potentially speed up the cleaning cycle. The difference in speed isn’t massive, but using Turbo Mode will take a big bite out of battery life, anywhere from 10- to 40 percent, depending on the cleaning mode used. Most users should probably stick with Standard. The rubbet plug that’s supposed to keep water out of the robot’s charging port is largely ineffective.Christopher Null/Foundry My only other real complaint with the K Pro 150 is related to its misguided power port. Just like with the K60, the fat rubber plug over the port didn’t keep water from getting into it, and after every run I would find a significant amount of fluid trapped inside. As with the K60, I eventually stopped trying to dry out the port after each run and just charged it with the water remaining inside, with no ill effects noted. And finally, it’s worth noting that the K Pro 150 has no waterline retrieval mechanism: It must always be fetched with the included hook. Should you buy the iGarden Pool Cleaner K Pro 150? You knew there would be a catch with this review, and it’s a big one. The iGarden K Pro 150 carries a list price of a cool $3,000. Even after the 25-percent off coupon presently available on iGarden’s website, this is still a $2250 pool robot, which is outlandishly expensive and even pricier than my more full-featured favorites like the Polaris Freedom Plus and Beatbot Aquasense Pro. That makes for an extremely difficult calculus that revolves mainly around convenience. Being able to drop the robot into the pool on Monday morning and not think about cleaning it again until two Fridays later is a game-changer, and there are times when my pool is indeed that dirty due to wind and rain. Most of the time, however, I’m happy to drop in a robot on demand and retrieve it when the job is complete—especially if it’s waiting for me at the waterline at the end. For me, the massive battery in the K Pro 150 is overkill, but your mileage may well vary. This review is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best robotic pool cleaners. Read...

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