Kensington Dual 2K Docking Station

Great In Theory. Not So Much In Practice – While looking for a solution to un-tether a bundle of cords from my laptop when at home, I came across docking stations. There's cheap ones and expensive. I really wanted to like this unit (especially because of the price) as Kensington generally has a good name. While this was at the mid tier (not cheap, not the most expensive), it definitely has some great features and seemed like the pick of the bunch: - 2x USB3.0 on the front (for quick plug & play drives etc) - 4 x USB2 on the back (for 2.4GHz dongles and legacy devices) - 1GBs LAN connection - Two monitor connections (HDMI & DVI) - One USB 3.0 cable to the laptop!

I'm running this with Windows 10 on an ASUS Laptop running an A10 quad core with 16GB RAM and upgraded with an SSD. Generally still pretty fast even today. Connections are fairly easy - just hood up your peripherals to the unit (monitors, audio, LAN, keyboards etc) and plug the USB3 cable to a USB 3 port on the laptop. Windows picks the unit up easily enough. Download the software from the Kensington site and install. Then all your monitor options will work, as well as setting up audio (which won't work unless you have their drivers).

In practice the device under performs on all fronts. Where this may be a limitation with USB3.0 or the unit is up for debate. The end result is the laptop gets bogged down, even doing simple browsing. 1. LAN Port - going from a 100MBs+ speed with the laptop LAN port to just 75MBs (if you're lucky) on the Kensington. That's a 25% reduction in speed because a monitors hooked up. Okay, connect the LAN cable back to the laptop. 2. Display ports - It will display generally well on two monitor plus your laptop if you so desire. At the cost of LAN speed and USB 3.0 speed. Even USB 2.0 speed is affected...More on that later. OK, connect the external monitor back to the laptop port. 3. No USB 3.0 ports on the back? There's no way to easily remove drives from the unit. I hooked up a separate USB hub with switches so I can turn backup drives off when not in use. Personally I would like either all of them on the back, or have a few of both on the front and back. A USB 2.0 dongle on the front would take up less space than a USB3.0 cable hanging out of it (because that's the only option you have for USB3.0) 4. Dongle Support - it depends on the dongle you're using. I tried a few different mouse/keyboards and most stuttered when being used (Rapoo and HP keyboards, J Burrows Comfort Mouse). Sometimes you had to press the left button on the mouse a few times until it would respond. However, the Microsoft 900 Keyboard Mouse combo seemed to work well. OK, peripherals connected back to the laptop. 5. Both mic and speaker audio ports on the front?? Yeah maybe the mic port I could understand, but the speaker port should be on the back. 6. Random Disconnects - Sometimes the USB mouse would just disconnect randomly with no response. Sometimes the USB connection from the laptop to the device would disconnect and the only way to get it back online was to un-power and power up the Kensington. So you need access to the Kensington to unplug the power cord. All the while, the monitor would still be working. 7. Being such a large unit and stand provided, there's not a lot of places you can put it and you can't take the stand off. Maybe hide it behind or under a monitor. But with connections being on the front makes it impossible most of the times. A flat unit would probably be better with most connections on the back. And maybe a hanger so you could hide it behind a monitor if so desired? Or a horizontal stand so you can put it under the monitor with USB 3.0 connections easily accessible. So all in all, I still have connections to the laptop - The LAN cable - Kensington USB3.0 (to run the USB on/off hub) - HDMI monitor cable - Keyboard USB Hmmm, $200 for essentially a USB3.0 hub with a speaker connection seems a bit over priced. And I still have to have my original USB3.0 hub connected to turn off backup drives so they don't keep spinning and wear out. Yeah, nah - I'd give it a miss. As I said, great in theory....