At a look
Knowledgeable’s Score
Execs
- Wonderful efficiency
- Nice worth for the cash
- Optimized construct
- Fully secure
Cons
- Brief, built-in twine
- You’ll want your personal energy provide/charger
- Requires a comparatively fashionable laptop computer
Our Verdict
The Ugreen Revodok Professional 13-in-1 Triple Show Docking Station actually does all the pieces you’d need in a docking station, with some quirks that don’t actually stand in its method.
Value When Reviewed
$129.99
Greatest Costs As we speak: Ugreen Revodok Professional 13-in-1 Triple Show Docking Station
$129.99
Is it a USB-C docking station? Is it a dongle? The Ugreen Revodok Professional 13-in-1 Triple Show Docking Station tends extra towards the latter, nevertheless it’s an indication of issues to come back: shrinking sizes, however with extra highly effective capabilities.
This dock (hub?) contains three show ports, all providing 4K show capabilities (two at 60Hz, and a 3rd at 30Hz). Nonetheless, the USB-C twine is constructed into the dock itself, and also you’ll want to produce your personal (USB-C) energy twine to route by way of it.
Neither Ugreen nor Home windows Activity Supervisor recognized it as a DisplayLink dock, which means that it could be utilizing a generic type of compression often known as HBR3 (Excessive Bit Charge 3) with DSC (Show Stream Compression), which is constructed into the DisplayPort spec. That’s a little bit of an issue: As Dell has famous beforehand, most Eleventh-gen Intel Core and newer PCs ought to assist this expertise, and thus this dock. However it’s not 100% assured.
Nonetheless, this dock offers just about all the capabilities of a extra highly effective, dearer Thunderbolt dock, however at an enormously cheaper value. We’ve used this assessment to tell our roundup of one of the best USB-C docks.
Ugreen manufactures some very attention-grabbing USB-C {hardware}, however its attain is proscribed: You should buy it from Amazon for $129.99 and that’s about it. American consumers can’t even buy this dock from Ugreen itself, because it solely provides the product by way of its European web site for £129.99. UK consumers can get it from Amazon, too.
After which there’s the identify: Whereas Ugreen calls it the Revodok Professional, on the field it’s known as the USB-C Hub A number of Show Adapter, or the 13-in-1 USB-C Multifunction Adapter, or the CM681. (Should you’re on the lookout for different procuring websites, seek for “Ugreen 15978,” its mannequin quantity.) It seems to be an up to date, extra compact model of the Ugreen CM655 USB-C dock, which I actually preferred however now appears to solely be accessible from Ugreen instantly.
Mark Hachman / IDG
Design & Construct
The value, although, is intriguing, and so is the dimensions: 6.5 inches by 2.75 inches by about 0.75 inches thick, which is an inch or two longer and wider than what I’d affiliate with a standard dongle. At about 0.7 kilos, although, it’s nonetheless comparatively mild. Should you journey with moveable shows or have two ready at your vacation spot, I’d positively take into account this dock to be a journey possibility.
Particularly, the Ugreen Revodok Professional 13-in-1 Triple Show Docking Station contains an SD/microSD 3.0 slot on one aspect, subsequent to a 3.5mm audio jack, alongside three USB-A ports (two supporting 10Gbps, and one 5Gbps). There’s a 10Gbps USB-C port, as properly.
On the opposite aspect, the Ugreen Revodok Professional 13-in-1 Triple Show Docking Station contains the enter port in your USB-C charger, able to accepting 100W into the dock itself. Then there are two unspecified HDMI ports and a DisplayPort, able to DP1.4. Gigabit Ethernet and one other 5Gbps USB-A port spherical out the port choice. None of them, it ought to be famous, are rated for powering a smartphone; that’s one concession these kinds of unpowered docks make.
Should you journey with moveable shows or have two ready at your vacation spot, I’d positively take into account this dock to be a journey possibility.
The opposite concession is the brief, docked (although braided) twine, which is about 9.5 inches lengthy. If the twine isn’t lengthy sufficient to stretch to your laptop computer, or within the unlikely chance the USB-C connection wears out or will get bent, you’ll want to interchange all the dock. On my desk setup, the place I perch my laptop computer on a keyboard tray, the brief twine size positively required that I place the dock at an ungainly angle.
Mark Hachman / IDG
Efficiency
In a phrase, efficiency was glorious — save for the charging. The dock provided simply 1.45W out of the USB-C port and a pair of.5W out of the USB-A ports — that ought to be sufficient to energy most if not all peripheral gadgets. (Home windows failed to acknowledge an exterior spinning arduous drive on one event, nevertheless it labored each different time.) Smartphones, although, will simply trickle cost.
I used a charger rated at 100W to energy my check laptop computer, and 72W was transferred to the laptop computer after going by way of the Ugreen dock. That may be an issue with some laptops whose chargers don’t present just a little further charging oomph to accommodate a dock like this. (My Thunderbolt-equipped check laptop computer generated sufficient energy by way of the Thunderbolt port to maintain the dock powered up with out an exterior charger.) Thought the dock is manufactured from plastic, I observed no thermal points.
I observed no anomalies when connecting to Ethernet, although I used to be completely happy my RJ45 cable clipped in, due to the dock’s brief cable. There have been no audio glitches. There have been no glitches in any respect in connecting to or disconnecting from exterior shows, both — the soundness was glorious.
Weirdly, USB-C/DisplayLink docks constantly outperform Thunderbolt docks in my storage assessments, and the Ugreen Revodok Professional 13-in-1 Triple Show Docking Station was per that: 145MB/s on a linked SSD, versus 130MB/s or so for the common Thunderbolt dock. Streaming efficiency throughout Ethernet was terrific, with an imperceptible 9 out of 10,000 frames dropped. The dock carried out principally the identical even whereas my storage check was carried out within the background. Copying a 30GB folder with a bunch of multimedia information and different paperwork from the SSD by way of the dock to my laptop computer accomplished in a couple of minute, which is common.
The dock is proscribed to 60Hz at 4K decision, nevertheless. Whereas I don’t have an 8K monitor to check, our 4K check show does enable as much as 144Hz resolutions. Nonetheless, unplugging the second 4K show, leaving solely the one 144Hz 4K show, didn’t enable for greater than 60Hz.
Do you have to purchase the Ugreen Revodok Professional 13-in-1 Triple Show Docking Station?
The Ugreen Revodok Professional 13-in-1 Triple Show Docking Station does have some caveats, after all: the dearth of an influence provide, the brief twine, and the dearth of widespread availability. However I’ve been impressed with different Ugreen {hardware}, and the optimized construct and value are actual pluses. I positively suggest it.
This assessment initially appeared on PCWorld.