Ah yes, Thunderbolt, that revolutionizing new standard that next to no-one's using due to the high costs. Well, ok, that's not entirely true, but it has yet to take off, although LaCie is doing its best when it comes to getting products out there and its new eSATA Hub Thunderbolt series might win a few Mac owners over.
The eSATA Hub Thunderbolt series so far consists of a single device, so calling it a series is a bit pretentious. As the name implies, we're looking at a Thunderbolt device that adds eSATA connectivity. The eSATA Hub has two Thunderbolt ports, so in other words it can be daisy chained and as per the Thunderbolt standard, up to six devices can be connected. There are also two eSATA ports which will allow for a pair of eSATA drives to be attached to the hub. Apparently the power available from the Thunderbolt interface isn't enough to power the hub, as it also comes with a power supply.
We're not entirely impressed with the eSATA Hub though, as it's fairly large at 40x140x85mm (WxDxH), but that's really the least of its problems. The potentially biggest issue is that LaCie is using an old SATA controller that's limited to the 3Gbps SATA standard. This is just poor, especially considering the low cost of a SATA 6Gbps controller and even more so when the eSATA Hub doesn't even sport hardware RAID support. Then there's that little thing about pricing and as we know, LaCie isn't known for being cheap, but at $199 excluding a Thunderbolt cable, the eSATA Hub is going to have a hard time finding people willing to pay its steep price.Source: LaCie

Read more: LaCie announced the eSATA Hub Thunderbolt series by VR-Zone.com