Aoostar just showed off a new external graphics card dock that is causing quite a bit of conversation among PC enthusiasts. For those who are not familiar with the term, an eGPU is a box that lets you plug a powerful desktop graphics card into a thin laptop to give it a massive boost in gaming or video editing power. This new model from Aoostar is significant because it is one of the first to use the brand new Thunderbolt 5 connection. This matters because the biggest problem with older docks was that the cable was too slow to handle the fastest graphics cards, which meant you were paying for power you could not actually use.
The Thunderbolt 5 connector in this dock effectively doubles the speed of previous versions, allowing for a much smoother experience when playing demanding games at high resolutions. To support the latest and most power-hungry cards like the NVIDIA RTX 50 series, Aoostar has packed in a massive 800W power supply. This is a big deal for people who want to turn their portable laptop into a world-class gaming station with just a single cable. It represents a major step forward for the “one-device” lifestyle, where you use a light laptop for work during the day and then plug it into this powerhouse at night for heavy-duty tasks.
Focus is more on Power than other features
Even though the raw power of this device is impressive, the design has some very strange omissions that are confusing long-time tech fans. Most high-end docks act as a “hub” for your desk, meaning they usually include extra slots to add more storage or a port to plug in a wired internet cable for faster speeds. Surprisingly, Aoostar decided to leave out an M.2 connector for extra hard drives and a LAN port for internet. This means if you want a fast internet connection or more space for your games, you will still have to plug extra cables or adapters directly into your laptop, which defeats the purpose of having a clean, single-cable setup.
This decision seems to be a result of the company focusing entirely on the graphics performance. By dedicating all the available “bandwidth” or data speed of the cable to the graphics card, they are ensuring that the game runs as fast as possible without any interruptions from other devices. While this is great for a professional gamer who only cares about frame rates, it might be a deal-breaker for a creative professional who needs their dock to do everything at once. It forces the buyer to make a choice between having the absolute fastest graphics speed or having a convenient dock that manages all their accessories in one place.
How much will this ‘high-power’ performance cost?
Because this dock uses the latest technology and a very large power supply, it is not going to be a budget-friendly option. While Aoostar hasn’t given us a final price tag just yet, the cost of the Thunderbolt 5 controller chips alone suggests that this will be a premium product. Most industry analysts expect the dock to sit in the $400 to $500 range, and that does not even include the price of the graphics card you have to buy separately to put inside it. This puts the total cost of the upgrade well over $1,000 for most users, which is a significant investment for a laptop accessory.
The release is expected to happen in the first half of 2026, coinciding with the wider availability of laptops that actually have Thunderbolt 5 ports. If you have an older laptop with Thunderbolt 3 or 4, you can still use this dock, but you will not get the high-speed benefits that make it special. For the average consumer, this device is a sign of where the market is going. We are moving toward a future where the line between a portable laptop and a powerful desktop computer is almost completely gone. Even with its missing ports, the Aoostar eGPU is a clear look at how much power we will soon be able to pull out of a single, tiny cable.
