The dock powered connected USB mice, keyboards, USB keys, and a pair of 4K displays absolutely acceptably for day-to-day office work, but Windows refused to recognize a 10Gbps USB 3.2 external SSD when connected to Plugable’s dock because it didn’t supply enough power. The problem here is the external power that the Plugable UD-6950PDH provides-or rather, doesn’t provide-to individual devices.

However, using AJA System Test’s storage benchmark on an SDXC UHS-II VP90 card, we found that the performance on the card mounted inside the dock (259MB/s read, 240MB/s write) was comparable or slightly better than inserting the card into a dedicated slot on our laptop. Note that Plugable doesn’t specify a speed rating for the SD cards, possibly because the transfer speed between your PC will be affected by how much data is being transferred over the 5Gbps, 3-foot USB-C cable at any one time. The rear of the Plugable UD-6950PDH USB-C 4K docking station. There’s gigabit ethernet, a mic and a headphone jack, as well as a small blue LED power indicator. Plugable also includes five 5Gbps USB-A ports (three on the front, two on the back) and both a microSD (supporting up to MicroSDXC) and an SD slot (supporting up to SDXC, RSMMC, or MMCPlus). Specifically, the UD-6950PDH includes two groups of a DisplayPort 1.2 and an HDMI 1.4 port, one group per display.

The DisplayLink docks we’ve tested generally provide solid connections for office work, though the massive amounts of data PC gaming requires can impact the dock’s performance. You probably won’t need to explore many more options. The driver isn’t specific to Plugable, so it will work with other USB-C docks, too. As such, it’s not plug-and-play, but requires a software driver that can be easily downloaded from Plugable, after which your computer will need to be restarted. Note: To learn about competing products, what to look for in a Thunderbolt or DisplayLink dock, and get buying recommendations, see our roundup of the best Thunderbolt docks.Ī DisplayLink USB-C docking station uses data compression to push data across the USB-C interface, approximating the experience of a much more expensive Thunderbolt dock.

Microsoft display dock review