Anker has released a new docking station that eliminates the problem of having to choose between portability and a plethora of ports. The 13-in-1 Anker Nano Docking Station includes various USB and video ports so you can quickly connect a laptop to multiple monitors, but its most useful feature is a small, portable USB-C hub that ejects from the front of the dock to expand your laptop’s connectivity while you’re away from your desk.
The new dock connects to your laptop over USB-C, but that port needs to support both DP Alt Mode and Power Delivery to access all of its functionality and use it as a power source. The dock supports a resolution of 4K / 60Hz when connecting a laptop to a single monitor, but the resolution drops to just 1920×1080 / 60Hz when connecting to three displays using the dock’s two HDMI ports and single DisplayPort connector. And while Windows users can display something different on all four screens (including the laptop’s), for Mac users all screens connected through the dock will display the same thing.
The docking station also features a 10Gbps USB-C port, a 5Gbps USB-C and USB-A port, two slower 480Mbps USB-A ports, a 1Gbps ethernet port, a headphone jack, and SD and microSD memory card slots. The removable hub, which is a bit smaller than a credit card, can be ejected with a button press even when the dock is connected to a laptop. It takes the dock’s 5Gbps USB-C and USB-A ports with it, along with the memory card slots, and includes its own dedicated HDMI port, a USB-C port for connecting a power source, and a USB-C jack for attaching the hub directly to a laptop without a cable.
Correction, December 2nd: An earlier version of this article misstated that Mac users can only mirror what’s on their laptop’s screen to monitors connected through the dock. The monitors can display something different to what’s on the laptop’s screen, but multiple monitors will all display the same thing.
