Price When Reviewed

$189.99

Best Prices Today: Cyber Acoustics DS-1000 Essential Laptop Docking Station

$169.99

Unfortunately, Cyber Acoustics’ DS-1000 Essential Laptop Docking Station may be seen as a lure for the unwary: It’s a real USB-C docking station, and that’s not all the time what you need.

If you purchase this dock, you’re wading into a large number you will not be conscious of. Put merely, this dock is more likely to obtain what it units out to do in the event you use a laptop computer with a Twelfth-gen or Thirteenth-gen Core chip inside: energy two 4K shows over only a generic USB-C port. (We haven’t examined this dock on a laptop computer with a Ryzen chip inside and USB4.)

USB-C peripherals have historically fallen into two classes: Thunderbolt docks, which merely blast 40Gbps of knowledge throughout a USB-C cable; and DisplayLink-powered USB-C docking stations, which can be utilized with a laptop computer with a USB-C port, however not essentially Thunderbolt. DisplayLink, now owned by Synaptics, makes use of a proprietary technique of knowledge compression that requires devoted driver assist to approximate the expertise of a Thunderbolt dock.

We’ve tended to disregard a 3rd possibility: a laptop computer with a USB-C cable that helps what’s generally known as HBR3 with DSC. This high-bitrate possibility makes use of its personal compression methods at the side of the DisplayPort normal, but it surely wants assist by the laptop computer processor, the GPU, and the dock. This answer is plug-and-play, although, so you need to know immediately if it really works.

The backside line is that HBR3 with DSC claims to supply related efficiency to what DisplayLink presents (4K60 output to 2 shows), however assist has been inconsistent. Our expertise with Eleventh-gen Core laptops has been that HBR with DSC assist is a crapshoot, however Twelfth-gen and Thirteenth-gen {hardware} are supported and provide constant, profitable experiences—particularly in case your laptop computer falls underneath Intel’s Evo laptop computer model, which undergoes additional testing.

So, do you wish to cope with all that? Assuming you do, effectively, CA’s DS-1000 delivers with the suitable {hardware}.

Mark Hachman / IDG

This slim plastic dock measures a hair over six inches large and about three inches deep. It lacks a stand, and warms somewhat sharply underneath load. But it packs a pair of HDMI ports on the rear, 4 5Gbps USB-A ports on the again, in addition to gigabit ethernet. The USB-C cable, measuring about 2.5 ft, snakes out from the facet of the dock. (CA’s guide and documentation is awful, by the best way, so we’re not fairly clear what HDMI port expertise it makes use of.) On the entrance is one other USB Type A port and a USB-C port, too.

The latter USB-C port can be utilized to cost your smartphone, because it places out 6.7W of charging energy, or sufficient to fast-charge a smartphone. Otherwise, it is a powered dock, and it’ll provide 90W of charging energy to your laptop computer, too.

Our take a look at laptops use Thunderbolt 4 connections. Our Twelfth- and Thirteenth-gen laptops did superb on each a twin 4K output in addition to one 4K and one widescreen 1440p show. On an Eleventh-gen laptop computer, the DS-1000 might solely handle 4K at 30Hz, somewhat than 60Hz—which is what CA guarantees, really. This was the case for an Eleventh-gen laptop computer with Thunderbolt 4, and a second laptop computer with only a USB-C port. Both laptops included discrete GPUs.

(Are we dishonest to make use of a Thunderbolt 4-equipped laptop computer? We don’t assume so. Remember, this dock is $189, comparatively low cost for even a price range Thunderbolt dock—which this isn’t. If it can save you some money, why not?)

Streaming 4K60 video through YouTube throughout the built-in ethernet port labored flawlessly, with only a handful of dropped frames. Those elevated after we flipped between tabs on the opposite show, or moved the window round. There wasn’t any lag whereas transferring home windows round on both show, and we seen no stuttering in any respect, even when copying information from the laptop computer to an exterior SSD.

We nonetheless wouldn’t suggest this dock for gaming, although.

We’re not formally recommending the Cyber Acoustics DS-1000, due to its compatibility points with older {hardware}. But in the event you’re keen to take a position the time (and let’s face it, Amazon’s return coverage) it is a comparatively cheap docking station that can be utilized in an workplace or house workplace.