Kensington (SD4600) USB-C Universal Laptop Docking Station - 4K Single or 2K Dual Display with DisplayPort & HDMI outputs, 4 USB ports (1 USB-C + 3 USB 3.1), Gigabit Ethernet Port and 3.5mm Headphone and Microphone jacks - Windows, macOS & Chromebook compatible

I’ve had my old Dell dock for ages as it has always worked with each new laptop I’ve been issued, but not on my latest – Dell XPS 13. No click in slot, so I decided to have a look for a dock that will work with it – hence buying the Kensington USB C dock.I liked my old click in dock as I keep my power supply, that came with my laptop, in my bag. That way I never forgot it or had to remember to unplug. Probably the reason I’ve not moved away from my dock before. This has changed now as I now have just one cable to attached and I can keep my power supply in my bag.Looking inside my boxWell packaged – lots of support, simple box but at the end of the day I discarded this anyway.The dock is compact, sleek and sits flat on my desk. I can even rest my laptop on it to give me a better viewing angle. Nice idea. It is only 21cm x 9cm so small and easy to position on my desk. In the mounting ideas, it does state you can fix to a VESA mounting bracket on a monitor. I don’t have one of these, but could see that this would be useful.There is an instruction quick start guide in the base of the box, along with power supply – a brick style which will remain plugged in. Guessing as it will charge my laptop and the dock it needs to be larger than just for my laptop, but as I’m not carrying it round then I don’t need to worry about the size of itA USB C to USB C cable to connect my laptop to the dockConnecting it upThere are DisplayPort and HDMI ports on the dock - I use 2 monitors and with a few change of cables that I had been using (DVI and HDMI) I connected my current displays to the dock. I would imagine depending on the age of your monitors that you may have to get an adapter to connect to DP or you may just have one display, but I find working on spreadsheets and multiple files two displays are essential. More so now that the laptop screens are getting smaller – even if the resolution is better. I have both display showing 60Hz at 1920 x 1080, and the quality is pretty impressive.I put the power supply into the back, and as my home office is near my router I am lucky that I can connect directly to my broadband so connected the Ethernet connector. The speed transfer rate whether I was connect to the dock or directly to my old PC (new one doesn’t have an Ethernet port) was running at the same rate. This does give me a great solution for my new laptop as it doesn’t have the Ethernet port on it, and I don’t have to run Wi-Fi all day. I have a wired USB keyboard that I love using – that angry email doesn’t sound the same on a laptop keyboard, so I used one of the 3 USB ports to connect it. I prefer a wireless mouse, still not a fan of Bluetooth, so I used a second USB connector for the receiver. That left me one USB – which I connect my iPhone cable so I can charge it whilst I work.There are 2 USB C connectors, one has a computer image so I connected that end to my laptop, the other I would guess is to charge or USB C phone or add another USB C accessory. I don’t have any of those, so that is left waiting for the future.On the front of the dock there is a 3.5mm jack for audio and microphone, I tried these by connecting my iPhone headset into the headphone sock, and skyped called a colleague and was surprised on the quality and sound levels I got. This would mean leaving a headset plugged in as I’m normally use them for other things, or rushing to do it when I get it call, but nice idea for someone who uses it on a regular basis.Has it replaced my old Dell click in dock. You bet it has. I now just put my laptop down, put the USB C connector in, you can’t get it wrong it goes in either way round, and it gets power and sends my signal to my two displays. I love it. I honestly didn’t think anything could replace it, but this truly has. The laptop had a onetime download from the Kensington website but that was quick and every time I’ve connected since, it connects straight away, good job it is a web browsers I don’t have a CD drive in my new device!It does what I need, it offers the connectivity I need for my mouse, keyboard and charging of my phone, it displays to both monitors and I can keep my charger in my bag for when I am at the office or with customers.

I bought this to serve as docking station for my 2016 Macbook.First impressions:• It arrived in a plain white box adorned with a sticker. A very functional sticker with a barcode and a diagram of the contents.• Out comes the device. It fees very cheap. Light and cheap and plasticky. It's small and black and plastic. Hum.• Below it are a power brick, USB-C cable, and 3 IEC kettle leads for the UK, US, and Europe (so two for the landfill)• There are several little thin paper sheets with the quickstart guide, warranty and an invocation to install the ethernet driver.This is not boding well. Clearly ZERO love has been put into the physical product and packaging design.The supplied USB-C cable is 39cm long between the plugs. It has suspiciously long plugs. This is WAY TOO SHORT to achieve sensible placement of device/laptop/monitor/etc in my admittedly constrained desk setup. So... I tried another longer cable which happily charged my laptop and connected to the USB devices but the display didn't work - turns out on closer inspection that said cable didn't support USB 3.1 at all anyway, so no dice there. USB-C is such a sea of frustration! Anyway, Kensington should have supplied a longer cable in the first place. Or a couple of them ;)Back with the supplied cable it connected to my main monitor fine (over both displayport and HDMI) driving it at 60hz as expected. The connection appears solid on either interface.USB connectivity:It happily connected to my various USB things at first and then after I had plugged and unplugged the laptop (trying to get a viable desk arrangement) a few times it completely gave up on them. I had to pull the power on the hub to get them back. I've not tried taxing it particularly with USB 3 devices.Ethernet:I installed the driver and it works BUT the speed seems quite limited. I got 238 Mbits/sec up and down testing via iperf3 to my router. That's not exactly gigabit speed and I'm not impressed. Getting it to recognise that there was a connection also took some repeated unplugging - exactly what I bought this thing to avoid!Audio:Ok so it provides separate audio in and out minijacks. They pop up as audio devices on my mac, helpfully titled "USB audio CODEC". One pleasing thing here is that it allows me to adjust the volume from my machine (which many external audio interfaces do not). According to Audio Midi setup it supports 16bit stereo output up to 48khz. That is pretty poor - I'd have expected a 24-bit 192khz DAC. Oh but wait. The audio input is MONO!!! Really? This is such an afterthought. To be honest the whole product feels like an afterthought.Given what this thing cost and the fact that I really hate it I'm going to send it back. All in all I've not been having much luck with third party hubs and dongles so far. Humph, the OWC one gets pretty mixed reviews too but at least it looks nice...