Today’s Question: I am replacing my desktop computer with a laptop (MacBook Pro). Right now my storage via a USB hub and my external monitor via HDMI. I have four hard drives connected at each port. What would you recommend as a docking station for connecting the MBP to my monitor and external hard drives. I intend on upgrading my external drives to SSD. I do plan on removing the MacBook Pro when traveling.
Tim’s Quick Answer: Ultimately you want to get either a docking station or hub that is powered for maximum compatibility and that includes enough ports of the right type to meet your needs now and for the foreseeable future.
More Detail: In a general sense, both a docking station and a powered hub provide the same basic features, with a different form factor. There are seemingly countless options available, which can make it a little challenging to find the right product for your specific needs. But that also means there’s a very good chance that you can find something that is a great fit for your hardware configuration.
The cheaper approach would be to get a USB hub with the ports you need based on your current and anticipated future hardware. The most important thing if you’re thinking of this approach is to make sure the hub is powered, so that it will support having multiple bus-powered hard drives connected at once, for example.
In some cases, the hub might include a specific power connection, but more common with newer models is that one of the USB-C ports supports pass-through power. This enables you to connect a power adapter via a USB cable to the hub, so that adequate power is available to the devices you connect to the hub. Then you just need to find a powered hub with the right combination of ports based on the hardware you’re using.
For example, a popular hub from Belkin supports 100 watt pass-through power, includes an HDMI port, along with two USB-A ports and an SD card reader. However, you may need more ports, including possibly needing more USB-C ports depending on the drives you’re using.
You can find this hub here:
If you want to really maximize the number of ports available, I recommend opting for a docking station, which you can think of as being a larger hub with more ports of various types. In some cases, the docking station also provides a support for your laptop.
The docking station I recommend considering is the CalDigit TS5 Plus. I consider this to be more of an advanced hub rather than a docking station, since it doesn’t include a mount for your laptop to connect to. However, it provides a great range of ports. That includes five USB-C ports, five USB-A ports, Thunderbolt and DisplayPort ports, and more. While it lacks an HDMI connector in favor of the newer Thunderbolt 5 connection, you could use a USB-C to HDMI adapter to connect a display using HDMI.
You can find this docking station here:
Again, the key is to make sure the hub or docking station you’re considering includes a power connection (in general a docking station will include power by definition), and that the hub includes the specific ports you need for your configuration. But be sure to also choose an option that features additional ports of the type you might use in the future. For example, you may have a number of hard drives that connect via USB-A, but as you replace those with newer hard drives they will mostly likely connect via USB-C instead.
