Sonnet Echo 15 Impressions

I have been looking at Thunderbolt Docks for my MacBook Pro for some time and finally took the plunge. I decided to purchase the Sonnet Echo 15. It was the most expensive of the docks that I looked at but I decided to get it because of the extensive functionality it offered. It would give me USB 3 on my older MacBook Pro and still has FireWire and esata. It also included an optical drive and room for a hard drive.

When I first unpacked the dock I liked the look of it. It did not look cheap like some others I looked at. I plugged in my peripherals and monitor and things worked right away. I didn't start having issues until I loaded the driver and rebooted. When I rebooted I found that I first had to login to my MacBook and let it finish booting up before I could use the keyboard and mouse. I have a usb keyboard and mouse and when I have them plugged into the Mac instead of the dock I can boot up and login on the external keyboard and display.

The second issue that I found was that when I plugged my speakers into the dock I only got sound out of one of them. I then unplugged the input cable and plugged it back into my MacBook and sound returned to normal.

The fan on the dock is not loud but is noticeable. If that was the only problem with the dock I would keep it but it's not. For a dock that costs almost $500 I expect to have no issues. I will be returning the dock and will be back to my original setup.