USB docking station experience/recommendations?

[Ramses]

Looking for a USB3 unit with one if not two 1080p outputs.

These have made my "short" list.
They seem to most if not all be Displaylink chipsets.

One question is if the onboard HDMI out on my laptop will still be available using one of these.
Two, is there functionality to move the screens around to fit my physical monitor setup like Windows has, as in can I set it up such that the laptop is on my left, one screen in front, and another to my right, and be able to move the mouse left to right across them? I'm assumig that's basic functionality but it never hurts to ask I guess.
Three, lag? Will be running on an i7-4510u. Not planning on gaming, if netflix will play on one of the extended screens great, if not can play it on the lappy LCD or on something off the onboard HDMI out assuming that still functions.

Thoughts/opinions?

http://targus.com/US/universal-usb-30-dv2k-docking-station-with-power

http://www.kensington.com/us/us/449...-dual-dvi-hdmi-vga-video-(sd3500v)#.VJxguV4C4

http://targus.com/US/universal-usb-3_0-dv-docking-station-with-power-acp71usz

http://www.belkin.com/us/B2B122/p/P-B2B122/

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&sku=332-0446

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&sku=452-BBPG

http://www.amazon.com/Plugable-UD-39...ocking+station

http://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-Sma...ocking+station

http://www.amazon.com/HIS-Multi-View...ocking+station

 

[deathbyburrito2]

I only have experience with the plugable UD-3900. Just install the DisplayLink drivers from the DisplayLink site and plug in the USB. I use dual video, USB, LAN, and audio out on the dock and haven't had any problems with it at all.

You're basically adding a USB video card, so the monitors work the same as usual as far as moving screens and mouse going across. On both the laptops I have used the screen of the laptop is still functional as well as the HDMI port.

Since it is at work I haven't tried Netflix at all, but I assume it would work fine. I did at one time have three monitors (two from Plugable, one from laptop) and the lcd screen all on at the same time from my Dell. Normally I'm running just the two off the Plugable. 1920x1200 24" (HDMI) and 1280x1024 19" (DVI to VGA).

 

[thecoolnessrune]

Just a heads up that HDCP is a concern on some DisplayLink devices. Older versions of DisplayLink's chipset did not have HDCP, but all modern implementations of the Chipset should

As to performance, lag is minimal and pixelation on USB 3 is pretty much non-existent. Keep in mind that this is a USB 3.0 muxer at heart. The Muxer has hardware encoding to send the stream to your laptop, but it is still up to your laptop to decode the stream in software. DisplayLink has done a great job in modern iterations to minimize overhead, but the devices are still not that friendly to devices running just on battery, and there will be a performance hit on device-constrained systems (like BayTrail). Your processor however will have no issues running the DisplayLink decompression software + Productivity software and / or video streams.

 

[Ramses]

Thanks for the advice guys, I'll get one ordered here shortly.

 

[Ratman6161]

Looking for a USB3 unit with one if not two 1080p outputs.

These have made my "short" list.
They seem to most if not all be Displaylink chipsets.

One question is if the onboard HDMI out on my laptop will still be available using one of these.
Two, is there functionality to move the screens around to fit my physical monitor setup like Windows has, as in can I set it up such that the laptop is on my left, one screen in front, and another to my right, and be able to move the mouse left to right across them? I'm assumig that's basic functionality but it never hurts to ask I guess.
Three, lag? Will be running on an i7-4510u. Not planning on gaming, if netflix will play on one of the extended screens great, if not can play it on the lappy LCD or on something off the onboard HDMI out assuming that still functions.

Thoughts/opinions?...

I've got a Kensington at work and my wife has a pluggable at home. They appear to be identical other than the brand labels on them.

My wife has an HP combo device with Windows 8.1 and an atom CPU (don't recall specifically which one). With the Atom CPU there is noticeable lag though it is generally usable (though not pleasant to use). With her i3 (a couple of generations old) laptop it works great. There is a tiny bit of lag but overall acceptable for web browsing, word processing etc. I use my Kensington at work with my original surface pro (which is an i5) and don't notice any lag at all and does work fine with Netflix. So...I would not expect your i7 to have any trouble with it.

 

[Ramses]

Great, I ordered the Pluggable dual monitor version just now.
I'll report back how it goes.

 

[Ramses]

Well the Pluggable 3900 works like a charm, install drivers, plug in and go.
Quick test shows about 10% more CPU usage watching netflix on a screen run through it than native. Very cool...

 

[sm625]

In the same control panel window where you change the resolution, you can drag and drop your displays to put them in the order that you wish.

As for docking stations, I must say I'm less than impressed with what I've seen. I see lots and lots (and lots) of displays going black for 0.8 seconds at many of the stations around my company. I'm not a huge fan of blanking screens. We use many different docks. I think its more an HDMI / intel graphics problem than anything since even computers with no docks tend to do it.