Anker 778 Thunderbolt Docking Station Review: Four Screens, One Steep Price Tag

Who This Dock Is For

Most single-cable Thunderbolt docks top out at dual-display support, which is fine until your workflow demands more screen real estate than that. The Anker 778 Thunderbolt Docking Station is built specifically for that gap, offering quad 4K display output (or a single 8K monitor) through a combination of two DisplayPort outputs and an HDMI 2.1 port, all routed through one Thunderbolt 4 upstream cable. That's a genuinely rare feature at this price point — most docks with this many simultaneous display outputs live in the flagship tier, so if your setup includes three or four monitors, the 778 solves a problem that fewer competitors even attempt to address.

Power and Port Layout

The 100W power delivery is another practical strength. That's enough headroom to charge demanding laptops — think 16-inch MacBook Pros or similarly power-hungry ultrabooks — without needing a separate charger on your desk. Combined with the fixed Thunderbolt 4 cable, this makes the 778 a genuine single-cable docking solution: video, data, networking, and charging all handled through one connection to your laptop.

Where the port selection gets more mixed is on the USB-A side. You get two USB-A ports running at a respectable 5Gbps, suitable for external SSDs or fast flash drives, but the other two USB-A ports are capped at 480Mbps. That's USB 2.0 territory, and it means anything you plug into those slower ports — a fast external drive, for instance — won't come close to its rated speed. It's not a dealbreaker if you're using those ports for keyboards, mice, or other low-bandwidth peripherals, but it does mean you need to be deliberate about which port you use for which device.

Rounding out the connectivity, you get two USB-C ports at 10Gbps, Gigabit Ethernet for stable wired networking, and the aforementioned HDMI 2.1 plus dual DisplayPort combo for video. That display flexibility matters in practice: HDMI 2.1 covers modern TVs and monitors with high refresh rates, while the dual DisplayPort outputs give you options for professional monitors that favor DP connections. Having both standards available means you're not constrained by what ports your specific monitors happen to have.

The Price Problem

At $379.99, the 778 is expensive relative to similarly-specced Thunderbolt docks on the market. You're paying a real premium for the quad-display capability, and if your use case only calls for one or two monitors, that premium buys you nothing — you'd get better value from a cheaper dual-display dock. The pricing only makes sense if you're actually going to use all four display outputs, or if the 100W charging and single-cable convenience are worth the markup on their own.

Verdict

The Anker 778 is a specialist tool, not a general-purpose recommendation. If you run a multi-monitor setup with three or four displays and want to drive all of them plus charge your laptop through a single Thunderbolt 4 cable, it delivers on a feature set that's genuinely hard to find elsewhere without stepping up to enterprise-grade docks. But if you only need one or two screens, or if you're sensitive to price, the combination of a high sticker price and two USB-A ports stuck at 480Mbps makes this a harder sell. Buy it for the display count and charging power; don't buy it expecting best-in-class value.