Lenovo USB-C Universal Business Dock

Nice and compact. I thought there would be an audio out Aux with it. My bad for not reading carefully. But overall I’m very satisfied with its “plug-and-play” attitude for everything else! 🙂

I have become spoiled using 2 external monitors with another laptop I used for several years. Current laptops’ commuting abilities make them usable for me for all my needs whether in the office, traveling, or in class. However, the small single laptop screen is not as easy to view with my eyes as it was 10 years ago. I bought a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon, Gen 7 based on previous good performance of an earlier Thinkpad. This docking station works well, but like most new laptops it connects via the super/lightening/all in one USB C connection. I would prefer the older style connector, but this most be the way PC makers want to go. The setup was fairly quick and worked almost like plug and play with my two existing monitors. I had to invest a few minutes to set up the monitor displays as I wanted, but this probably the case with any docking station. I looked at the cheaper knockoff docking stations, but was not impressed with their reviews. Some also do not charge the laptop which makes them almost worthless. This Lenovo branded dock was certainly not cheap and I probably paid a premium for the name. So far it is working as advertised to charge my laptop and seamlessly switch to the external monitors when I plug it into my laptop.

I have two of these, one was issued by my job. Both work well, but for the features it is expensive.

Sure it is expensive, and has some issues with display not showing up (fixed by updating firmware and plugging out/in the laptop USBC cable). But apart from that it works pretty good with all the devices i have connected so far. My 32 inch 2560×1440 LG monitor works like a charm at 144hz using displayport.

I use it in conjunction with my Razer Advanced 15 (mid-2019?) an PopOS! 19.04 running kernel 5.3.

– Ethernet is detected as a r8152 without issue.
– All USB and both Display Ports work.
– I have not tried the HDMI port but I imagine it works fine.
– Headphone jack works and is detected as a USB sound device (snd_usb_audio)

PopOs/Ubuntu/Linux detect the display port monitors but won’t send a signal if the laptop is using Hybrid or the laptops integrated Intel graphics. I needed to switch to the Nvidia card to get the displays to work. The USB ports and the Ethernet still function while using Hybrid or Intel, just not the display ports.

I still use the external power adapter on my laptop because of it’s power consumption and haven’t enabled or tried charging via the thunderbolt port. Image it would work though.

I got this for my working from home with a Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga L390, works great- for one day! I use two 24″ Sansui monitors, one using the display port from the docking station and the other using the HDMI from the docking station. I also have the USB connections for my wireless keyboard and mouse into the docking station, and a USB headset, all working great. Only one problem, worked for only one day then dead.

A lot cheaper than traditional docking stations (important since I’m paying for this out of my own pocket); and pretty convenient (just connect 1 cable, which allows me to place the laptop anywhere). I’ve used up all its ports except the HDMI port; and it works great.

Out of the box, I had issues with it. It detects my USB 3.1 hub (with 3 external USB drives) but wouldn’t allow me to access 2 of them (the one that it allowed me to access created data corruption; had to reformat the drive); it also recognized my ethernet cable attached but wouldn’t transmit any data out of it. After updating its firmware, it’s working great.

My laptop is a Thinkpad T14 gen 4.