Anker’s new USB-C dock hides a removable hub

Anker, a well known identify within the PC peripherals house, has a brand new method to docking stations and hubs: mix them.

Anker calls its new dock the Anker Nano Docking Station (13-in-1), and sells it for $149.99 on its web site. However you don’t should be a Eighties nerd to know the way it works. (If you’re, consider Soundwave, a boombox Decepticon of Transformers fame, which hid one other Decepticon in its cassette deck, like LaserBeak or Ravager.)

In any occasion, Anker’s dock is each a docking station in addition to a removable hub, which neatly solves the issue of what to do with a desktop-mounted docking station once you take your laptop computer on the street. Anker’s 13-in-1 dock ejects a 6-in-1 hub, which you’ll be able to join on to your laptop computer, too.

It’s a neat trick, however with a few drawbacks: First, the entire setup is a basically a USB-C docking station, a bigger model of a USB-C hub. Something that makes use of a generic USB-C port connects by way of its 10Gbps bus, which turns into a difficulty once you route a number of shows and Ethernet by way of it.

USB-C docks like Anker’s remedy this drawback through the use of Show Stream Compression, a local model of information compression that exists on fashionable laptops, and is supported by two totally different DisplayPort video interfaces. DSC supplies totally different capabilities to totally different laptops, nevertheless: In case your dock helps DisplayPort (DP) 1.4., the dock can join as much as three shows on this dock at 1440p decision. These with the older DP 1.2 interface can solely join to 3 shows on the awkward 1600×900 decision (or two 1080p shows), as Anker’s useful setup video factors out. Intel laptops usually made the transition between the 2 with the Eleventh-gen Core processors being the almost definitely to assist DP 1.4.

USB-C docking stations aren’t a nasty selection, however with something greater than 10Gbps, you may discover stuttering and different points. Thunderbolt docks, with a 40Gbps connection, are normally most popular with giant, multiport docks.

The opposite hitch is that the “hub” portion of the docking station merely slots into the dock itself by way of a single fastened USB-C plug. That’s high quality for the dock, but it surely additionally implies that there’s no wire for the hub portion to connect with your laptop computer. That implies that the Anker hub portion will sit flat towards your laptop computer. Since laptop computer makers usually crowd ports collectively, that implies that the hub would possibly find yourself blocking different ports in your laptop computer. Anker recommends you “analysis” this, but it surely’s nonetheless a gotcha to consider.

Nevertheless, Anker’s dock does embody an ample assortment of ports, and the hub does too. The dock additionally provides 100W of energy to your laptop computer, by way of a 140W charger. (The hub, nevertheless, would require a separate USB-C charger to push energy by way of its enter port.

As The Verge notes, this hub will work with each Macs and PCs, however with totally different outputs relying on what kind of Mac {hardware} you personal.