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You can never have too many screens at your desk. I have four different 27-inch 4K monitors attached to my desktop at home and sometimes I wish I had even more. Unfortunately, if you have a laptop and you're looking to go with a quad-display setup, you don't have a lot of compelling choices as most docking stations top out at two monitors.
Announced today, Plugable's new TBT4-UDZ docking station supports up to four, 4K 60 Hz displays via its two DisplayPort and two HDMI outputs. On Macs with M1 Pro and M1 Max chips, you can only use two monitors, a limitation of that platform.
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)
The attractive, metal dock sits vertically or horizontally and connects to your laptop's Thunderbolt 3 or Thunderbolt 4 port via a single cable that can also provide up to 100W of charging.
In addition to its video outputs, the TBT4-UDZ comes loaded with ports, including a 2.5 Gbps Ethernet connection, a single USB-C 10 Gbps port, three USB Type-A 10 Gbps ports, two USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps) Type-A ports, a USB 2.0 TYpe-A port, a 3.5mm audio jack, an SD card reader and a microSD card reader. There's even a power button, something most docks don't have.
(Image credit: Plugable)
A couple of years ago, I tested Plugable's TBT3-UDZ, which is a predecessor to the TBT4-UDZ, but it supports only two monitors and operates over Thunderbolt 3. I was really impressed with the attractive design, strong performance and strong build quality of this prior model. With my ThinkPad X1 Carbon (6th Gen), I had no problem connecting to two 4K monitors and playing video at 60 fps.
The TBT4-UDZ is listed on Amazon right now and will start selling for $299 on January 17th. If you've got a laptop with Thunderbolt 3 or Thunderbolt 4 output and you want to use it with three or four displays, this could be a great choice.
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Avram Piltch is Managing Editor: Special Projects. When he's not playing with the latest gadgets at work or putting on VR helmets at trade shows, you'll find him rooting his phone, taking apart his PC, or coding plugins. With his technical knowledge and passion for testing, Avram developed many real-world benchmarks, including our laptop battery test.
Why on Earth would you put the host port on the front opposite of where all of the rest of your permanent cords go? I don't understand why they didn't swap the host port with the USB-C PD port. People are way more likely to plug things in and out of that than the host port when used on a desk.
Why on Earth would you put the host port on the front opposite of where all of the rest of your permanent cords go? I don't understand why they didn't swap the host port with the USB-C PD port. People are way more likely to plug things in and out of that than the host port when used on a desk.
Maybe the concept is it's coming off the laptop and going back to the dock? as in you could have a short 1-2 ft cable? but mostly if I have 4 displays, the laptop is closed over on the side and a rear port is much prefered
