Do Lenovo's still use docks?

[nightmarevoid]

My mom asked me to find a new laptop for her for work, and my first thought was to get her a lenovo with a dock so she can connect all of her peripherals (charger, external storage, monitor, printer, keyboard/mouse) in one go, but all of the lenovo docks I find only support older models, with the newest only having 8th gen intel processors. I always liked the Lenovo docks for work, because it lets you be mobile and still have a nice clean desk when you put your laptop down on it. The USB-C docks just aren't the same. Does anybody have any evidence to the contrary?

[jaslion]

10 minutes ago, nightmarevoid said:

My mom asked me to find a new laptop for her for work, and my first thought was to get her a lenovo with a dock so she can connect all of her peripherals (charger, external storage, monitor, printer, keyboard/mouse) in one go, but all of the lenovo docks I find only support older models, with the newest only having 8th gen intel processors. I always liked the Lenovo docks for work, because it lets you be mobile and still have a nice clean desk when you put your laptop down on it. The USB-C docks just aren't the same. Does anybody have any evidence to the contrary?

Lenovo shifted to thunderbolt "docks" they no longer do the set the laptop down into it docks. Pretty much like everyone else. I don't really see the problem here as the thunderbolt docks are universal and well you now plug in 1 cable instead of docking the laptop.

[nightmarevoid]

1 minute ago, jaslion said:

Lenovo shifted to thunderbolt "docks" they no longer do the set the laptop down into it docks. Pretty much like everyone else. I don't really see the problem here as the thunderbolt docks are universal and well you now plug in 1 cable instead of docking the laptop.

The locking docks Just made everything cleaner looking. A dock with a cable doesn't do much for tidying up the desk, and I can see people going to pick up their laptop without unplugging the thunderbolt dock and yanking everything with it. 

[Kisai]

6 hours ago, nightmarevoid said:

My mom asked me to find a new laptop for her for work, and my first thought was to get her a lenovo with a dock so she can connect all of her peripherals (charger, external storage, monitor, printer, keyboard/mouse) in one go, but all of the lenovo docks I find only support older models, with the newest only having 8th gen intel processors. I always liked the Lenovo docks for work, because it lets you be mobile and still have a nice clean desk when you put your laptop down on it. The USB-C docks just aren't the same. Does anybody have any evidence to the contrary?

All laptops since Skylake that have USB-C connectors either have USB-C docks or USB-C and proprietary docks. There is literately no reason for any OEM to produce a non-USB-C dock.

 

With that said, some larger 15"/17" laptops do require their OEM's dock for full power charging (such as Dell Precision 7xxx models.) If you connect them to any other USB-C dock, the dock works just fine, but it will not charge from it (unless the laptop is on standby.) So you have to use their 180/240w power bricks at the same time.

 

Those large propietary docks that you just sit the laptop down on, are extremely fragile, as people tend to just grab the laptop, not realizing they have to press a button to release it, which tends to result in breaking pins off the dock. There are high incidents of these kinds of docks failing in business environments, and it's basically the end-users not being careful.

 

USB-C docks however have a problem with people kinking/pinching the cables, and this results in the dock cables being damaged, which makes them about on par with proprietary docks. If possible, buy USB-C docks where you can replace the cable, and make sure the cable itself can be ordered separately (eg Dell does not sell WD15/WD19/TB16/TB19 cables separately) otherwise you may end up replacing the dock instead if just the cable is damaged.

 

With that said, it is better to go with powered, non-displaylink docks for laptops rather than unpowered or displaylink models. Displaylink is fine for basic business needs, but the iGPU/dGPU on laptops will only work with the laptop monitor or displayport alt-mode. If you set the displaylink monitor as the primary, many programs that use the GPU will no longer see the GPU, as Displaylink is seen as a software monitor. So you want the dock to actually support 2x1080p Displayport (over USB-C/TB3) or 2x4K displayport (over TB3). Powered docks will remove the need for the OEM power brick if the laptop can be charged with the USB-PD provided. Many laptops under 95w no longer come with power bricks and are powered by USB-C alone.