Ports galore – Targus Universal USB 3.0 Dual Video Docking Station

In this age of super-thin, super-light notebooks and tablets, it’s not uncommon for people to run out of ports into which to plug peripherals. A lot of these thin-and-lights come with maybe two USB ports – one USB 2.0 and one 3.0 – and if you’re lucky a full-sized HDMI output and a headphone jack, and that’s it.

It makes for some rather annoying habits at the office, like unplugging external keyboards and mice in order to plug in external storage devices, being limited to just one external display, and heaven help you if your office doesn’t yet have WiFi and you’re forced to use an Ethernet cable for connectivity, then you have to add in a USB to Ethernet converter as well. Talk about a juggle.

Constantly swapping between configurations can be a small annoyance at first that quickly escalates into the bane of your existence, completely undermining the appeal of having a business notebook that looks good and doesn’t weigh a lot.

And that is why Targus has come up with this handy device: a universal USB 3.0 dock that connects every peripheral you could ever reasonably need to use at your desk to your thin and light notebook using a single USB 3.0 port – including up to not one, but two external screens with a maximum resolution of 2048 x 1152 each. Technically that’s beyond Full HD (1920 x 1080), but why you’d need exactly that resolution is a mystery. Still, it’s available if you want it.

The beauty of the solution is that you can connect all of your devices to the dock and leave them constantly plugged in, and all you have to do is plug the dock into that one available USB 3.0 port on your laptop or tablet, and you have access to everything you need. It also lets you arrange your cables neatly since they’ll be permanent fixtures, thereby eliminating entirely (or at least reducing) the desktop clutter typically caused by a multitude of cables.

If support for two screens surprises you – and it should because that’s an unusual but highly welcome feature for any dock to have – just know that it’s only possible through Targus’s use of DisplayLink technology, which powers the HDMI and DVI ports you’ll find on the device. And even more impressively, should your external displays have HDMI and VGA connections only, Targus has included converters in the box – one DVI-to-HDMI and one DVI-to-VGA. So unless you’re using older screens that only have VGA connections, Targus’s universal hub will let you easily set up external displays for that all-important three-screen productivity-enhancing setup.

Other ports on the dock include Gigabit Ethernet, audio in and out jacks, two USB 3.0 ports and four USB 2.0 ports and a security lock that’ll let you lock the dock down and keep it out of the hands of jealous colleagues.

The device itself is attractively-designed and will look right at home even on the most corporate of desks.

Should you be the owner of a thin and light work laptop or tablet, or you simply loathe cable clutter, this handy dock will go a long way to making your office desk so much more streamlined, and your movements into and out of the office just that much easier.