Professional’s Score
Professionals
- Three shows, dude!
- Three HDMi, three DisplayPort
- 100W PD for laptop computer
- 20W USB-C at entrance
Cons
- USB-C not Thunderbolt
- Single downstream USB-C
Our Verdict
If you need lots of display screen house the Plugable USB-C Triple Show 4K Docking Station is your savior. It permits you to join as much as three exterior shows to your laptop computer or different USB-C machine, together with two 4K displays at full 60Hz.
Greatest Costs At this time: Plugable USB-C Triple Show 4K Docking Station
$279.00
Free
Docking stations are good if you wish to add an exterior monitor to your laptop computer to offer you a desktop-like setup—both mirroring the laptop computer display screen or making a separate display screen to offer you extra space to work with.
Most of our really useful USB-C docks are able to including two exterior shows, however this dock can provide you three—whereas nonetheless utilizing the laptop computer’s display screen as a fourth should you want it.
As its identify suggests, the Plugable USB-C Triple Show 4K Docking Station (UD-ULTC4K) can certainly join your laptop computer to as much as three displays. It’s the corporate’s flagship USB-C dock.
It was up to date in June 2022 with new chips, extra charging energy and a much-improved port setup.
It makes use of a mixture of USB-C DisplayPort Alternate Mode (“Alt Mode”) and DisplayLink USB graphics—for its two DisplayPorts and one HDMI port; extra on which later if you wish to get technical.
The dock sits upright on a stand, so it takes up much less desk house than many horizontal docking stations—which could possibly be essential with three hulking screens sat there. However should you choose a low-profile dock, this one will not be for you.
Plugable UD-ULTC4K options
- USB-C 3.1 Gen.2 (10Gbps) connection to host laptop computer, charging at 100W (PD)
- Two DisplayPort 1.2 and two HDMI 2.0 (DisplayLink)
- One DisplayPort 1.2 and one HDMI 2.0 (Alt Mode)
- 4 rear USB-A 3.0 ports (5Gbps, 4.5W)
- Gigabit Ethernet
- One front-facing USB-C 3.0 port (10Gbps, 20W)
- One front-facing SD Card Reader (UHS-II)
- Entrance-facing Audio In/Out – 3.5mm jacks for attaching headphones, speaker or microphone
- 135W energy provide
The standout options are the six show ports. You may’t use all six on the identical time however you’ll be able to combine and match show sorts.
HDMI has probably the most market share so will probably be discovered on extra shows however DisplayPort is the extra in a position and complicated. HDMI really makes use of DisplayPort know-how as its base.
The 100W PC charging is sufficient for even bigger laptops, and the front-facing 20W is highly effective sufficient to cost a big pill and any smartphone.
rated at simply 4.5W energy, the USB-A ports are actually for information solely (resembling connecting a wired keyboard or mouse, reminiscence stick or printer), reasonably than for charging gadgets resembling smartphones.
The unique UD-ULTC4K had no card reader slots. This has been rectified on the newest model with a quick UHS-II SD Card reader. This may be helpful for including extremely moveable, cheap flash storage for backups, for instance.
Plugable
Three shows from one dock. How’s that accomplished?
The UD-ULTC4K options three DisplayPort and three HDMI ports, which you need to use interchangeably to attach the exterior displays to your laptop computer.
There may be various technical complexity in how the UD-ULTC4K can run three shows. Look away now should you’re squeamish in terms of know-how. We’ll wake you up when it’s one thing it is advisable fear about.
The UD-ULTC4K makes use of two distinct applied sciences to supply the three outputs:
The ‘Show 1’ outputs (both DP or HDMI) are pushed by DisplayPort over USB-C Alternate mode.
The ‘Show 2’ and ‘Show 3’ outputs are pushed by the DisplayLink chip inside the dock. Independently, they require a DisplayLink driver to perform. DisplayLink makes use of an put in driver and the system CPU and GPU to transform graphics information on the system into USB information packets. That USB information is then despatched over the USB cable as information packets, and transformed again to video info and output to the displays by way of the DisplayLink chip within the docking station.
Nonetheless, because it’s not a local video answer, there are some workloads the place Plugable doesn’t advocate it; together with gaming, video modifying, digital audio workstations (DAWs), and protected-content (HDCP) playback. For these workloads, customers will need the complete throughput of a “naked steel” native GPU connection—resembling offered by your selection of DisplayPort or HDMI port on this dock’s Alt Mode.
Supported shows
You may join three 4K shows at 60Hz by way of DisplayPort or HDMI with USB4, Thunderbolt and USB-C host laptops that assist DP 1.4 Alternate Mode.
On hosts that assist DP 1.2 Alternate Mode, you’ll be able to connect one 4K at 30Hz by way of Show 1 (Alt Mode – DisplayPort or HDMI) and two 4K at 60Hz by way of Shows 2 and three (DisplayLink – DisplayPort or HDMI).
1,366×768 decision will not be supported on both DisplayLink based mostly DisplayPort or HDMI outputs.
Mac compatibility
Mac customers ought to word that the macOS may have points with DisplayLink, on particular variations of the Mac working system (Excessive Sierra 10.13.4 to 10.13.6). Plugable recommends the dock for Macs operating macOS 10.15.5-10.15.6 (Catalina), macOS 11 (Large Sur), and macOS 12 (Monterey).
Apple’s newest MacBooks use the corporate’s personal super-fast Silicon processors. One limitation of the M1 and M2 chips is that they assist only one exterior show. The extra subtle M1 Professional, M1 Max and M1 Extremely do assist a number of exterior displays.
However worry not, as DisplayLink fixes the M1’s external display limitation, and you need to use this dock so as to add as much as three displays.
Keep in mind, although, that latest MacBooks have Thunderbolt 3 or 4 reasonably than USB-C ports, so hooking as much as a USB-C dock just like the UD-ULTC4K will lose lots of Thunderbolt’s 40Gbps bandwidth. You is likely to be higher served with a Thunderbolt-specific docking station—see our roundup of the perfect Thunderbolt docking stations—though we’re but to check one which can provide you entry to a few shows and that’s what the UD-ULTC4K is all about!
UD-ULTC4K value
On the time of writing the Plugable USB-C Triple 4K Show Docking Station is out there within the US solely, for $279.
Verdict
If you need lots of display screen house the Plugable USB-C Triple Show 4K Docking Station is your savior. It permits you to join as much as three exterior shows to your laptop computer or different USB-C machine, together with three 4K displays at full 60Hz.
On the minus aspect, Thunderbolt customers don’t have many triple-display dock choices, and would possibly good on the lack of their 40Gbps bandwidth.
However if you need three massive screens in your desk, this dock serves you proper and is a superb improve on the unique.