Disclosure: I receive compensation for the products I review and for any products you purchase using my affiliate links.
I have a lot of peripherals. I guess I choose to have them, however, for my job I do need quite a few USB ports so it is a requirement but some of them are just me being extra I guess.
I’ve been looking for a dock for a while to try and get rid of some of the craziness I was using (a cheaper dock that had a few of the ports go out, a USB-c dongle, and my monitor’s built-in dock).
This docking station seemed like it might be the ticket.
The first thing you need to do is go to displaylink.com/downloads and download the software/drivers if needed. This dock will not work without this, at least on macOS.
I had some issues with the dock trying to suck too much power from my 16″ Intel Macbook Pro, however after installing the software, restarting, unplugging, and replugging things in, eventually I was able to get my 43″ Dell U4320Q as well as a 27″ Acer monitor (in vertical format) up and running via HDMI and DisplayPort.
In addition to this docking station, I have a power USB/USB-C hub plugged into it for even more things that I need to plug into my machine. Ugh, too many things. Anyways…
I did have to try plugging it into a few different ports on the Intel Macbook Pro, but right now it seems to be working well enough and supplying power to the machine.
I would say the experience was better on my M1 Macbook Air. After installing the software, it worked without much of a hiccup.
I think there are still some issues here and I am sure it might require unplugging and plugging it back in now and then, but I will update my review if anything major happens.
As of now, I would recommend this for someone with the technical knowledge and patience to get it up and running, but don’t expect a seamless experience, however, I wouldn’t say that is a problem with this dock in particular, but most USB/USB-C based peripherals/docks/hubs.
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