Buying a MacBook Pro? Better budget $200 for dongles

And you thought losing the headphone jack was bad.
 By 
Louise Matsakis
 on 
Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

UPDATE 5:16 p.m. ET: The prices of the Thunderbolt 3 USB-C accessories have been lowered by Apple and this post no longer accurately reflects them. You can view the new prices here.

If you were traumatized by the dongle you needed in order to use headphones with the new iPhone 7, I have bad news for you.

Apple's new line of MacBook Pros also requires some serious investment in a variety of different dongles.


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In order to get everything you need, you might end up having to dish out more than $200.

The new MacBook pros only have two or four Thunderbolt 3 USB-C ports (depending on which model you choose) a headphone jack and nothing else. That means to plug anything else into the laptops, you'll need a ton of dongles.

If you want to hook up your new iPhone 7 to your brand new MacBook Pro, you're going to need a $19 dongle for that.

Are you a photographer that uses a camera with an SD card? Gotta get a dongle ($49.95) for that. What about an Ethernet Adapter? Dongle ($34.95) up.

Do you use another monitor with your laptop? I do. Need a dongle ($39.95) for that.

Want to connect your old Thunderbolt 2 devices to your new Macbook? You can't, at least not without yet another dongle ($49).

All together, you could end up paying more than $200 to do everything you already can with your current MacBook without a problem.

All of this is on top of the already steep price you'll have to pay for the new laptops. The lowest end model (which doesn't even come with the fancy Touch Bar) will set you back $1,499.

The higher end MacBook Pros with the Touch Bar start at $1,799 for the 13-inch and $2,399 for the 15-inch.

Apple's new MacBook Pro might be sleeker and smaller than any previous model in history, but it definitely comes at a price.

To put all of these expensive dongles in context, consider that 46 percent of Americans said that they did not have enough money to cover a $400 emergency expense, according to a Federal Reserve survey.

Kind of makes all these dongles hard to justify, especially when you're already shelling out for an expensive laptop.

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Louise Matsakis

Assistant Programming Editor

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