The Best Thunderbolt Expansion Peripherals for Editors

Toolbox by Jonny Elwin

Expand your editing set up with Thunderbolt

So I’m thinking of upgrading my trusty MacBook Pro later next year, but it only comes with 2 USB 3.0 ports and 2 Thunderbolt ports and an HDMI port. So I’ve already begun looking into how to expand it’s usefulness through all these nifty Thunderbolt peripherals you can get these days. Here is an epic run down on some of the best available Thunderbolt devices.

What’s the difference between Thunderbolt 1 and 2?

Thunderbolt 2 delivers twice the throughput of Thunderbolt 1, providing up to 20Gb/s of bandwidth to each external device and allowing you to daisy-chain up to six peripherals on each port, so, if you wanted to, you could plug in up to 12 external devices via Thunderbolt alone. (If those devices also allow for daisy chaining, with additional Thunderbolt ports on them.) The new Mac Pro will feature Thunderbolt 2.

If you are after them, The Register has some good technical details on Thunderbolt 2, where they also note that the upcoming USB 3.1 should expand its capability from 5Gbps to 10Gbps. Everything is getting faster. read more...