Anker Nano 13-in-1 USB-C dock review: Small, useful, slow to charge

Price When Reviewed

$149.99

Best Prices Today: Anker Nano (13-in-1) Docking Station with Detachable Hub

Devices with smaller pop-out options are inherently cool. Take Batman’s Batpod cycle, as an illustration. So Anker’s Nano Docking Station (13-in-1, with its Removable Hub) immediately provides a little bit of cachet with its pull-out USB-C hub, making it handy to tackle the highway.

This flexibility doesn’t come low-cost. Anker expenses about $150 for what remains to be a USB-C docking station, although with the flexibility to connect with three shows. This Nano dock (the A83C3) additionally doesn’t embrace a few of the charging capabilities that you just may in any other case affiliate with different Anker merchandise. There’s not likely sufficient energy to quick-charge a smartphone, for instance.

(Is it adequate to be added to PCWorld’s best USB-C hubs and docks? Keep studying to seek out out.)

Anker’s 13-in-1 dock does match the “nano” invoice: it’s 1.57 inches broad and 5.5 inches excessive. Its depth is just below 4 inches, so this can be a compact little dock that makes use of its area extraordinarily successfully.

A bit blue LED encircles the removable hub on the entrance of the show, an unobtrusive accent which will be turned off if wanted. It solely sits vertically, and Anker even warns that the dock can grow to be unstable if it’s positioned in one other place akin to the other way up.

Mark Hachman / Foundry

Remember, this can be a 10Gbps USB-C dock, so its capabilities rely on what laptop computer you’re connecting it to. I linked a number of laptops, together with laptops with an Intel Core Ultra 100 and AMD Ryzen AI 300 chips inside them. Connecting to 2 docks ought to solely ship as much as 1440p decision on two shows. But with laptops with USB4 ports or Thunderbolt 4 ports on them, the dock powered two shows at 4K, 60Hz.

Only after I pulled out a Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio (11th-gen Core processor, Thunderbolt 4) did the output drop all the way down to 4K, 30 Hz on one show and 1440p on the opposite. (Technically, your laptop computer might want to help DP Alt Mode for show output and energy supply for charging.)

Anker’s quick-start information presents a tiny HTML glyph hyperlink to an internet handbook, which reveals the specs. Two HDMI 2.0 ports and a DisplayPort 1.4 port present show connections on the rear, alongside two legacy USB-A ports with 480Mbps connections for a keyboard and mouse. The rear additionally features a gigabit Ethernet port.

Mark Hachman / Foundry

Technically, this can be a three-display dock, with an extra DisplayPort connection on the again. But with simply 10Gbps of bandwidth shared between them, issues get much more iffy. With a laptop computer that helps Display Stream Compression (DSC), you may even see 4K60 throughout all three shows. Older {hardware} could produce 1440p throughout all three or simply 1080p.

On the entrance of Anker’s dock are a headphone jack, a 10Gbps USB-C port, and the moveable hub. Plugged in, you’ll get a small subset of ports: a 5Gbps USB-C port, a 5Gbps USB-A port, and SD and microSD (TF) card slots succesful, Anker says, of as much as 104MB/s of information switch.

The dock provides a rated 100W to the laptop computer through a 1 meter cable. (The energy wire is about 60 inches.) Otherwise, this dock doesn’t provide an enormous quantity of energy: the entrance USB-A port (contained in the hub is rated at 4.5W of energy output, whereas the USB-C port subsequent to it places out a rated 7.5W. That’s actually not a lot in any respect, and much beneath the 20 to 45W or so smartphones require.

Mark Hachman / Foundry

Unplug the hub (and sure, you are able to do this whereas the dock is linked and powered up) and an extra HDMI port is uncovered, together with a USB-C energy enter that may settle for as much as 15W for the hub and output 85W to the laptop computer. The hub will be ejected utilizing a small launch swap on the highest of the dock itself. Note that the hub contains only a 5Gbps USB-C information connection, and there’s no built-in Ethernet jack.

Both the dock and built-in hub seems to be fully fabricated from plastic. Although the entire warmth migrates to the highest of the dock, I didn’t discover any thermal points in my time testing. A small white LED on the again of the dock reveals when the dock is powered on. Though the massive button on the rear of the dock means that it’s an influence button, it’s not. Pressing that button turns off the blue LED lighting surrounding the hub. An extended press, surprisingly, does nothing.

Mark Hachman / Foundry

That’s one of many solely bizarre issues about this dock. The vertical design and efficient use of area are terrific, and the dock sits vertically relatively comfortably, with none suggestion that it’d tip over.

Anker 13-in-1 Nano Docking Station: Performance

I sometimes take a look at a dock or hub for a number of days, as per our USB-C hub testing procedures. In this case, I let it sit on my desk as a hub for my work PC, then sit down and take a look at it extra extensively.

Honestly, the one factor that constantly aggravated me about this dock was its light-weight GaN charger, which I plugged into an influence strip. It makes use of a type of rectangular wall-wart plugs which overhangs the socket, and I used to be consistently nudging it out of connection whereas shifting my legs. Reconnecting the shows took about 20 seconds every.

Port spacing appears advantageous, even with such a good association. USB-A ports, with quite a lot of USB keys, want a sure diploma of area.

Mark Hachman / Foundry

Yes, the dock will get near the rated 100W output to a laptop computer, which might be much more than the 45W to 65W most productiveness notebooks demand. A 100W charger is extra suited to a high-end laptop computer and not using a discrete GPU akin to a Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio 2. Check your laptop computer’s handbook or charger for specifics. Otherwise, although, there’s actually no want to think about this dock to cost particular person units, because the output from every port is simply too low.

I reviewed this hub at about the identical time I reviewed a competing Mokin USB-C docking station, which I might say presents a greater worth. Anker’s dock solely dropped 8 frames out of 10,000 whereas streaming a 4K video over the dock’s Ethernet connection, which is close to good. I then take a look at the efficiency of an SSD linked to the dock, simulating what it could be like to maneuver information backwards and forwards. Here, the dock delivered barely much less efficiency than the Mokin’s dock: 150MB/s versus 166 MB/s. While streaming the video, I examined the dock once more: 119MB/s. Again, that’s barely lower than the 135MB/s the Mokin dock delivered.

Anker 13-in-1 Nano Docking Station: Conclusion

I’m torn. On one hand, I really feel like this dock is overpriced for what it presents, particularly the shortage of charging capabilities. On the opposite, you’ll be able to clearly make the case that you just’re shopping for two merchandise for the value of 1. Peripheral pricing will be everywhere in the map — Mokin’s for instance, says that its dock’s MSRP is $169, however sells it for $99.99 itself whereas Amazon drops that all the way down to $79. Tariffs clearly nonetheless play a task.

I don’t actually like the truth that charging choices aren’t included with this dock, however a lot of you have already got devoted charging pads or plugs. For me, that knocks Anker’s dock out of our beneficial class. But there’s nonetheless so much to love about Anker’s compact, practical little dock as nicely.