Ugreen Revodok Pro 13-in-1 review

In one look

Expert rating

Benefits

• Excellent performance
• Excellent value
• Optimized construction
• Completely stable

The inconvenients

• Short integrated cord
• You will need your own power supply/charger
• Requires a relatively modern laptop

Our verdict

The Ugreen Revodok Pro 13-in-1 Triple Screen Dock really does everything you’d want in a dock, with a few quirks that don’t really stand in its way.

Best prices today: Ugreen Revodok Pro 13-in-1 Triple-Screen Docking Station

$129.99

Is this a USB-C dock? Is it a dongle? The Ugreen Revodok Pro 13-in-1 Triple Screen Dock tends more toward the latter, but it’s a sign of things to come: smaller sizes, but with more powerful capabilities.

This docking station (hub?) includes three display ports, all offering 4K display capabilities (two at 60 Hz and a third at 30 Hz). However, the USB-C cord is built into the dock itself and you’ll need to provide your own power cord (USB-C) to run it through.

Neither Ugreen nor Windows Task Manager identified it as a DisplayLink dock, implying that it may be using a generic form of compression known as HBR3 (High Bit Rate 3) with DSC (Display Stream Compression) , which is integrated into the DisplayPort specification. It’s a small problem: as Dell previously noted, most 11th-gen Intel Core PCs and newer should support this technology, and therefore this dock. But it’s not 100 percent guaranteed.

However, this dock offers virtually all the capabilities of a more powerful and expensive Thunderbolt dock, but at an extremely lower price. We used this review to inform our roundup of the best USB-C docking stations.

Ugreen makes some very interesting USB-C hardware, but it’s limited in scope: you can buy it on Amazon for $129.99 and that’s it. US buyers can’t even purchase this dock from Ugreen itself, as it only supplies the product through its European website for £129.99. UK buyers can also get it from Amazon.

And then there’s the name: while Ugreen calls it the Revodok Pro, on the box it’s called the USB-C Hub Multi-Display Adapter, or the USB-C Multifunction Adapter 13- in-1, or the CM681. (If you search other shopping sites, search for “Ugreen 15978”, its model number.) It appears to be an updated, more compact version of the Ugreen USB-C docking station CM655, which I really liked but now seems to only be available directly from Ugreen.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Design and build

The price, however, is intriguing, as is the size: 6.5 inches by 2.75 inches by about 0.75 inch thick, an inch or two longer and wider than I would associate with a traditional dongle. However, at around 0.7 pounds, it’s still relatively light. If you’re traveling with portable screens or have two waiting at your destination, I would definitely consider this dock as a travel option.

Specifically, the Ugreen Revodok Pro 13-in-1 Triple Screen Dock features an SD/microSD 3.0 slot on one side, alongside a 3.5mm audio jack, as well as three USB-A ports ( two supporting 10 Gbps and one 5 Gbps). There is also a 10Gbps USB-C port.

On the other side, the Ugreen Revodok Pro 13-in-1 Triple Screen Dock includes the input port for your USB-C charger, capable of accepting 100W in the dock itself . Then there are two unspecified HDMI ports and a DisplayPort, capable of DP1.4. Gigabit Ethernet and another 5Gbps USB-A port round out the port selection. It’s worth noting that none of these are designed to power a smartphone; This is a concession that these types of unpowered docks make.

The other concession is the short, anchored (although braided) cord, which is about 9.5 inches long. If the cord is not long enough to extend to your laptop, or in the unlikely event that the USB-C connection becomes worn or bent, you will need to replace the entire docking station. welcome. On my desk, where I rest my laptop on a keyboard tray, the short length of the cord absolutely required that I place the dock at an awkward angle.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Performance

In a word, performance was excellent, except for charging. The dock only provided 1.45W to the USB-C port and 2.5W to the USB-A ports, which should be enough to power most, if not all, peripherals. (Windows failed to recognize a spinning external hard drive on one occasion, but it worked every time.) Smartphones, however, will only charge.

I used a charger rated at 100W to power my test laptop, and 72W was transferred to the laptop after running through the Ugreen dock. This could be a problem with some laptops whose chargers don’t provide a bit of extra charging oomph to accommodate a dock like this. (My Thunderbolt-equipped test laptop generated enough power through the Thunderbolt port to keep the dock powered on without an external charger.) Although the dock is plastic, I didn’t notice any issues thermal.

I didn’t notice any glitches when connecting to Ethernet, although I was glad my RJ45 cable was clipped in, due to the dock’s short cable. There were no audio issues. There were no issues connecting or disconnecting external displays either – stability was excellent.

Oddly, USB-C/DisplayLink docks consistently outperform Thunderbolt docks in my storage tests, and the Ugreen Revodok Pro 13-in-1 Triple Display Dock was consistent with that: 145MB /s on a connected SSD, compared to around 130 MB/s. for the average Thunderbolt dock. Streaming performance over Ethernet was terrific, with an imperceptible dropout of 9 frames out of 10,000. The dock performed essentially the same, even when my storage test was running in the background. Copying a 30GB folder containing a bunch of media files and other documents from the SSD via the dock to my laptop finished in about a minute, which is average.

The dock, however, is limited to 60 Hz in 4K resolution. While I don’t have an 8K monitor to test, our 4K test display allows resolutions up to 144Hz. However, unplugging the second 4K display, leaving only the single 4K display at 144Hz, does not not allowed to exceed 60 Hz.

Should you buy the Ugreen Revodok Pro 13-in-1 Triple Screen Dock?

The Ugreen Revodok Pro 13-in-1 Triple Screen Dock of course has a few caveats: lack of power supply, short cord, and lack of widespread availability. But I’ve been impressed with other Ugreen hardware, and the optimized construction and price are real pluses. I really recommend it.

This review was originally published on PCWorld.