ou know the drill: you buy a thin laptop, open the box, and find three identical narrow slots and absolute emptiness. Ultrabook makers stubbornly pretend that flash drives, wired internet, and older monitors have gone extinct. As a result, you have to buy adapters, splitters, and dubious little boxes along with your computer that heat up the moment they face a serious workload.
Companies traditionally charge so much for brand-name docking stations with fast ports that you could buy another tablet with the change. But the market is starting to snap out of it thanks to new standards that make speed and power more affordable without forcing you to overpay for a logo on the lid.
Ugreen has rolled out the 11-in-1 USB4 Docking Station internationally. Priced at $150 in the US or £110 in the UK, the device offers a port lineup that covers any modern workstation need without requiring you to take out a loan.
Ugreen has rolled out the new 11-in-1 USB4 Docking Station internationally.
The new dock packs 11 connectors, USB4 support with speeds up to 40 Gbps, and laptop charging power of up to 115W. That juice is more than enough even for power-hungry workstations that used to turn their noses up at third-party hubs.
What is hidden inside and where to put it
Pure practicality drives the design: the dock uses a horizontal form factor meant to sit right underneath your monitor or its stand. It takes up minimal desk space while saving you from a hideous tangle of wires right in front of your eyes.
A built-in USB4 cable roughly 80 cm long connects the dock to your laptop. The front panel holds a combo audio jack, SD and microSD card slots, plus USB-C and USB-A ports running at data transfer speeds up to 10 Gbps.
The front panel houses a combo audio jack, SD and microSD card slots, alongside USB-C and USB-A ports offering 10 Gbps data transfer speeds.
The back panel adds another USB4 port at 20 Gbps, HDMI 2.1, two USB-A ports at 5 Gbps, 2.5 Gbps Ethernet, and a USB-C port for a power brick of up to 140W. The device can channel up to 115W to your laptop while feeding another 15W out through USB-C to top up your smartphone.
What a single cable can do with displays
Capabilities are on an entirely different level here. Through HDMI 2.1 or USB4, you can plug in a single display running at 4K resolution with a refresh rate up to 240 Hz. Hook up two monitors, and the dock can simultaneously output 4K at 120 Hz to each screen.
Ugreen claims Plug and Play support for Windows and macOS. To tap into everything this dock can do, your computer needs a USB4, Thunderbolt 4, or Thunderbolt 5 interface.
Bear a vital catch in mind: if your laptop relies on older standard USB ports, you will not unlock the full potential of this dock. But for modern ultrabook owners, it is the easiest way to turn a single cord into a fully fledged desktop rig.
Overpaying for branded accessories finally stopped making sense once universal standards started delivering identical speeds for sensible money.