Side by Side Comparison of: Dell vs Targus

This is one of the better investment I made. The USB-C compatibility has been excellent and works with all of my Dell laptops (XPS 13 and XPS 15) as well as the new MacBook Pro w/Touch Bar without any issues. The included power supply is rated at 180W which is more than powerful to drive all of the laptops via USB-C as well as providing power to all of the accessories that are attached to the hub. The versatility of the USB-C is simply awesome and I am able to keep my work desktop clean because of this. I run multiple laptops for work and personal needs and this hub allows me to connect any given one of my laptops to the monitor, external storage, accessories (you name it) via a single cable. This truly streamlined my work flow process to say the very least. Highly recommended!!

After reading reviews on other docks from Dell I was skeptical this would even work, well it did work perfectly with my brand new XPS 15 9560 top of the line. Charges the battery via USB-C and drives my video as well tested with HDMI and a 4k monitor, so far it's all good. The 180W power brick is big and heavy but for the dock I don't really care. Power on and off is working fine as well. it's also smaller than I thought which is pretty good, fit's my monitor base perfectly.

This does is job extremely well. However, if you are running a XPS 9550 I strongly recommend making sure your BIOS is updated. Before updating my BIOS the Firewire port seemed to loose connection to the dock randomly and I could detect latency spikes. Ever since updating the BIOS I haven't had any loss of connection and any latency is undetectable to me. For context, I play online video games. So, maintaining connection and low latency between the laptop and dock (Ethernet, peripherals, and monitor) is essential.

We use this to convert my wife's Acer Aspire E 15 E5-575G-76YK into a triple monitor workstation at home. Simply plug monitors, mouse, keyboard, printer, network cable and any other USB devices into the docking station, then plug single USB cable from the station into the laptop's USB 3 port. On the first connection it took some time for Windows 10 to load and install all the proper drivers, but it was all automatic and now this device works perfectly.My wife love's it and I am very impressed with how well it performs!

I bought this to use with a Thinkpad Chromebook 13. It worked partially, but I'll be returning it:Features that work:1) Power over USB-C2) All USB ports3) Audio4) Ethernet5) Any *ONE* of the video outputsFeatures that did not work for me:1) More than external monitor (deal-breaker for me)This dock uses "DisplayPort over USB-C" alternative mode (alt-mode) for video out, driving the external monitors with your integrated graphics instead. It's supposed to support dual monitors via "extended mode", but no mater how I tried to tweak the settings in ChromeOS, it would only ever detect one monitor. This may be a limitation of ChromeOS, I don't know. I'll try again sometime in the future when USB-C and it's alternative modes are more common-place.In the meantime, I switched to using the Dell D3100. It uses regular USB 3, so it won't charge the Chromebook. It has a DisplayLink chip built-in (essentially an external video card). So it has a little more lag, but seems pretty well supported by Chrome.

I needed 6 USB slots and was using a 4-port USB hub at first, but I didn't want to strain my USB port by using too much juice on a single one. I also don't have an Ethernet port on my Razer Blade so that was also huge. The monitor connections are nice to have as well. Although they work well for browsing and such, the monitor connections don't work well for heavy stuff like gaming unless its for a second screen for your browser.Not sure if charging things through it is any faster then just plugging it in through a regular USB slot though.The other docks with the stands look alright but look like modems or routers and the stands look flimsy, this is solid. This thing actually looks better in person than in the pictures and this is smaller than I expected.

I got this today and while it didn't do everything I needed it to do, it is great for what it does do for me, for the price. It solved a lot off issues with cords and USB adapters. At this point it'll work for what I need it to do and I'm quite pleased.

It does everything I need. It's only USB 2, but does everything I need. Keyboard, mouse & printer.

I love it - bought it for an older computer and it does just what I need it to. Very convenient,

Works well. Arrived sooner than expected.

Helpful, space saving hardware.

Good multi port station, highly recommend it!

This serves it's purpose for running 2 monitors plus my laptop screen for a total of 3 screens. It's small and compact and so far so good. Quick delivery and I'm happy with my purchase. The only reason why I didn't rate it 5 STARS is because I'm not sure if it's the quickest / or clearest type of USB port, but then again, I don't know if it has to do with the Dell monitors or HDMI cables for screen clarity. It does its job well enough for me to use the dual monitors and my laptop screen, which is what I needed to make my work easier to flip through multiple screens.

Up until Mac switched to Thunderbolt 3, we exclusively used Thunderbolt Displays with our MacBook Air's and MacBook Pro's at the office. When Apple switched to Thunderbolt 3, we could not longer use our Thunderbolt Displays with new MacBooks without kludgy adapters, and we couldn't provide power to the laptop with the Thunderbolt Display at all.This dock is a good replacement for the Thunderbolt Displays when paired with a good standard HDMI monitor. The big caveat is with the Mini DisplayPort connector. I tried using one of our old LED Cinema Displays with it, and the maximum resolution I could set was 720p in MacOS. Next, I tried a Dell UltraSharp U2715H, and while there were a lot more resolution options, it was about vertical pixels short of choosing the native resolution of the Dell. Switching to HDMI solved that problem: macOS automatically picked the correct resolution.The side effect of this is that with macOS, because of the mDP issue, we can't run dual monitors at a decent resolution from this dock. I would assume that this is a macOS driver issue. Hopefully it will be addressed.macOS also doesn't require any external drivers or software. We plugged it in, and it worked.We plugged a Windows machine into the same dock with mDP, and it worked fine. My assumption is that you could drive two displays from a Windows machine with no trouble.This dock has me considering upgrading to a 2016 MacBook Pro or 2015 MacBook. We'll see. ;)

Like others have said this is a bit finicky. I find that it doesnt work with all USB devices. I have 2 monitors connected (one analog, one digital connection), a usb wireless keyboard, a wired usb trackball and a Dell computer. At first, it had a hard time with the usb devices, but you just have to be patient, grasshopper. Give the dock a few mins to 'see' the device and eventually it picks everything up and you are good to go until the next time you unplug one of the devices. When this happens I just reboot my laptop, wait for a few mins and everything kicks in. Yah, we shouldn't have to put up with this, but there are no better docking solutions for the Dell I have (slimline lattitude I think ).

First, be aware that the lower priced D1000 docks all seem to be discontinued models. I've ordered dozens now from various sources and the Dell site sells the current version, of course...and discounted options like here on Amazon have been one of 2 discontinued models. As of this review, the current model is Manufacturer Part# : N6C1X and on Amazon, I've received part number JCJWD.Amazon is not listing this with the manufacture's part number, so you don't know which version you will be getting...but I would assume the cheaper ones will be older releases.That being said, I only know of one dud so far in the 20 or so I have ordered so far on Amazon. It got USB power surge messages when plugged in and nothing worked.Outside of that, these generally have worked out well for setting all employees up with dual monitors for their laptops. We were getting the D3100 model, but if you don't need a 3rd monitor, then using the D1000 will save you a few bucks on each dock. Also, not by intent, we have been using the older versions of the docks and they do seem to be working fine. Going with the older models will save you $20-$30 per dock, too.Note, the USB 3 version of this DOES NOT power your laptop! The only way you can power your laptop from these docks is if you have a USB-C port on your laptop and you buy the USB-C version of this dock, which does cost more. Even with that, the USB-C port's power limit is 100 watts, i think...so your laptop must be using a power adapter below that level. Just check the laptop's capabilities for powering over USB-C before you order. I know some people seem to be disappointing by not being able to power a laptop off these docks, but that is not a feature of the dock.Also, if you want to plug a closed laptop into the USB dock and press power button on the dock to turn the laptop on...you are also looking for the USB-C version and need a laptop with a USB-C power port.I hope that helps prevent some people form ordering the wrong thing or ordering with the wrong expectations of the device.Besides all that, we've been generally happy with these docks. We switched to these from the lenovo USB docks, as they were somewhat unreliable too often and the newer ones used the proprietary plug for the laptop.

With an Ubuntu system there are still some strange things going on. To get everything working I need to boot with the dock connected, then disconnect and reconnect to get both the audio and displays going. Once the initial faffing about is done though it's great. All the ports work, and although the on-board audio jacks have been giving me problems lately; it's not a major problem for me since there is a headphones jack on my laptop.It works great with two 1080p screens and I have tried it with three. It was usable but slightly laggy with composing window managers. The linux drivers are still in their early stages and have some ways to go. The main complaint is that each screen effectively uses a CPU core to transfer the frames from the GPU buffer to the device. For me this means I get ~6 of my 8 available processing cores most of the time. For me this isn't an issue since I don't use most of them anyway but if you don't have hyper-threading or a quad core CPU, then you might be in trouble.There is a noticeable lag between the laptop's internal display and the USB powered displays but unless you were playing games with it I doubt you'll care too much.All in all I think this is a great product and I would recommend it for someone who uses a laptop but often sits a a desk. It's well build and while the included USB3 cable is tiny that can be replaced if you really need to. The included display adaptor is a nice thought and works as advertised.

Well, I have been using one of these docks for almost a year now, and I have been extremely impressed. The picture quality is great, and the functionality is very reliable. I do, however, have two complaints.Firstly, the setup is not as simple as it should be. There is firmware available on the Dell website, as well as on the DisplayLink website, but no native software application for managing the displays once installed. You are forced to use the Windows display management software, which is absolutely not user friendly, especially if you are running triple monitors or more. It takes some time to get everything set up and working properly, but once you get it done, you should not have any further issues.Secondly, this dock has a DisplayPort output. If, however, you own or intend to purchase monitors, like my three Dell U2414H flat panels, with MST (Multi-Stream Transport) capability (aka Daisy Chaining) you will be disappointed to learn that this dock does NOT support MST. Rather than connecting multiple monitors to one display output, you have to run a separate video cable for every single monitor. What's worse, the dock only has one DisplayPort output, the other two outputs are HDMI, so if your monitors came with DisplayPort cables like mine did, you will have to buy additional HDMI cables as well...None of these issues is a deal breaker, and now that I am set up, I am EXTREMELY happy with the end result, but just a little bit of info I wish I had known prior to making my purchases.

good for me

It's very useful. I wish it had a HDMI option.

Very good item. Works fine in so many ways. (We have two of them.) We use them as utility devices with laptops, desktops. and tablets. First use was with a new tablet to connect a usb connected optical drive to add "office" to the tablet. So convenient. Want to bring a desktop rear panel to the front for access? Use one of these. Only suggestion is to make one of these with a built in optical drive. Very happy with our docking stations.

Item arrieved in a timely manner. The installation CD was cracked. Seems to work just fine. Good choice if you have WIN7 and you PC does not have a serial port.

So, the product I ordered was the USB-C version and I just received this a day ago and unfortunately I'm going to have to return it. I did plug it into my new Dell XPS 9560 and Dell U2715H monitor. It seemed to work okay in that the display was working and it appeared to be charging my laptop, but the USB-C cord is really short. Too short, in fact. Because of this, I have to have it right next to my laptop, which just won't work. I was hoping I could mount it under the desk or in some discrete place to reduce clutter and cords on my desk. This just increases both.

This dock seems have a lag once you connect monitors and a couple usbs. I have updated all my drivers and reinstalled it twice, but the mouse still lags sometimes and the wireless keyboard I bought doesn't work at all unless within a foot of the dongle. I've swapped back to using a corded mouse and keyboard, now I can at least work. I brought that same wireless keyboard to my office with a dell port replicator that my computer connects into with the port on the bottom, and now there the wireless keyboard and mouse work perfectly fine.Also, the cord to connect to computer is far too short and the connector on the dock side seems to come loose frequently. Long story short I'm just not very happy with this dock.

I've have been using this product for a few weeks now. The only issue I have with this product is that one of the two monitors that I use often ends up flickering when the laptop is awoken from sleep mode. The work around is to turn off the monitor for several minutes and turn it back on. When the monitor is turned back on, the issue usually corrects itself. I've read the other reviews and information from Dell's support site that mention installing the latest drivers. I did ensure that I was using the most current drivers for my laptop including the BIOS and graphics card. That did not correct the problem. Also, my laptop does not charge through the dock. I have to connect the charger directly to the laptop.

read the fine print is my advice. contrary to my high hopes of a thunderbolt 3 "infinite" bandwith, this adapter cannot run a 4k at 60hz, even if the only display. I still dont understand why, if a simply thunderbolt 3 to display port can do 4k at 60hz, why not even if nothing else is running at the same time this docking station cannot do it.also, if I check disk speeds of a SSD, I get 400mbs of two I tested indivdually, but if I run two tests at the same time for two ssds connected, I get about half the speed (245mbs in one disk, 155 in the other), so this is simply bottlenecking despite the more than abundant bandwith of the thunderbolt 3 port. so my advice, that if you can afford some cable clutter, just get a thunderbolt 3 to display port, and a usb 3 replicator. that and a hdmi cable, should give you 4k 60hz, 1080hz, and decent speeds for anything except NVME type of external disks; this dell adapter does not do much more. I dont know if any graphical/CAD professional would buy this if you lose 60hz option.

First of all, the images are different from the unit I received. After closer inspection it seems that I received a TB15, which larger than this unit (about twice as high),Secondly, the rear audio port doesn't work. This means that in order to get audio I need to plug it in the front, which doesn't look great, but it's not a huge concern.The above points alone don't merit a 2-star rating reduction, but the fact that the dock itself doesn't work 100% reliably certainly does. Sometimes my XPS13 9350 will fail to boot correctly, other times only one of the external monitors turns on (I have 2 of them plugged in), and in some occasions some of the connected usb peripherals won't turn themselves on when the dock is powered on.All in all, having a dock is great when it works. When it doesn't it's a pretty frustrating experience which can take a while to get going (and negates the purpose of having a dock solution in the first place) and cause a bit of wear and tear on the laptop by having to hard-reset it in some instances.

I exclusively use this dock with Linux. In particular I'm using a Razer Blade Stealth previously running Ubuntu 16.04 and currently running Arch. The dock works "okay" most of the time. I realize that neither Ubuntu 16.04 nor Arch are officially supported by this device, thus I'm limiting my negative assessment to 3 stars instead of 2. That said, the hardware should be pretty universal and it being officially supported on Ubuntu 14.04 should mean that I would have no issues on newer operating systems presuming I have the appropriate drivers installed.So let's get down to it. The charging works great. It has consistently worked with no issues so I can't fault this device here. Charging of USB devices also works fabulously.The "Displayport over USB-C" functionality generally works well but with some quirks: displays using the VGA port can be very slow to wake up; and displays using the mini-DP port will sometimes randomly cut in and out after waking up (a quick fix normally requires locking the computer and waking it back up again). The issue persisted across both operating systems so I'm blaming the dock. I should also note that I have two of these docks (one at home, one at the office) and the issue is persistent across both of them. That said, I haven't had any issues with display recognition nor have I had driver issues.The networking also generally works. Occasionally the system won't recognize the wired connection. This generally isn't an issue because I have pretty reliable WiFi access both at home and at work, but it's still worth noting as I can see how this could be a problem for some people.The USB ports and headphone/microphone jack worked about 40% of the time on Ubuntu and don't work at all on Arch. This is kind of annoying because I have to keep separate USB hubs and I can't just leave a pair of headphones permanently connected to the dock. Part of the promise of this dock was to have everything working with a single cable and now I require a minimum of two. This isn't a massive issue or anything and is easily worked around, but it's still really annoying.Anyway, I purchased these over the Thunderbolt 3 docks due to price, size, and me not requiring the extra functionality of Thunderbolt 3 over standard USB-C. Additionally the reviews for the Thunderbolt 3 version left me somewhat skittish as people were reporting problems with officially supported operating systems. I fully intend to experiment with other USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 docks in the future and I have no intention of keeping these should they continue to not meet my needs in the future.

Does not with to my monitor. All other connections work fine.

Returned it wasn't what I expected for my needs

For $10 this was a great solution to a spot in my office where a guest and sit and get a wired internet connection, a commercial full size keyboard (PS2), a mouse and audio by plugging in one USB cable.

If you have a Mac, think twice about this device. My world revolves around OS X and Windows, both with USB-C ports. About half the time one of the two of my devices does not recognize all the ports on the dock. Sometimes it is the HDMI, others it is the Ethernet, and even others it is the USB standard port. It seems like completely shutting down the computer before disconnecting it helps, but that is not consistent. You definitely want to update the Dell drivers before doing anything, but this requires a Windows device. It is my intent to hold on to this because reviews on other USB-C docks are equally squirrelly when switching between OS X and Windows. However, if the additional reboots to get it to work increases, it might go back from where it came.

This docking station has issues with my laptop and monitors. It doesn't discover the monitors when the laptop is powered on. I need to unplug the USB-c input to the computer and then once it powers up, the usb input can be plugged in and it will discover the monitors. But if you just did this the computer won't switch from the wireless internet connection to the hardwired ethernet input unless you now put the computer in sleep mode and then wake it up. I only found this combination to get it to work after much trial and error and hours on the phone with tech support who said it just wasn't compatible with my Dell laptop. Dell products not compatible with Dell products? Wow, they need to work on that.I'm considering returning it and trying a non-dell docking station.

The DELL Dock D3100 works fine for Windows but fails to work when it comes to Ubuntu - even though DisplayLink provides Ubuntu drivers. Using the latest 1.3.52 DisplayLink Driver on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (4.4.0.72 kernel) running on a Dell M6800 with an Nvidia Quadra K3100M and Intel integrated graphics controller - the best that could be accomplished was the use of 1 external monitor - even though the product should at least support 2 external monitors. If your needs are strictly Windows 7 or Windows 10 then the product is fine. If it's a beefy workstation running Ubuntu - get ready for hours or days of R&D.

Bought 2 and they behave the same. I connected 2 HDMI 23 inch monitors, 1 USB wired Logitech headset, 1 USB wireless Microsoft keyboard and mouse, 1 ethernet cable, and 1 set of stereo speakers. Immediate lag noticed in HDMI displays, and Skype for Business won't work with the displays when connected through docking station. Also intermittent loss of USB wired headset and USB wireless keyboard and mouse. Reconnecting each device directly to laptop makes the problems go away.

Worked great while it worked. 6 months after purchase it no longer works. It is not recognized as a USB device on Windows any longer. Removing, Reinstalling, Rebooting, etc. all fail to get the device to be seen by the PC. Tried different USB ports to no avail, moved the items from this device into the same USB ports that weren't working for it, and the devices all come alive. Like I said, it worked great for a short period of time. In the end not worth the money for as long as it lasted. I recommend buying a USB display if you need it, and a seperate USB hub.

As others have mentioned there is some connectivity issues where various devices will disconnect over time.I have a XPS 9550 and let me say this dock works perfectly for about 4 hours or so. Then everything disconnect. Upon checking device manager, the dock is suddenly unrecognized - you know when there's a yellow triangle on the usb hub. The dock would not work at all until I went to the XPS 15 driver page and updated all my drivers. But the issue still remains that the dock WILL disconnect at least once a day.Anyways, you can search this issue with this dock and many people have this exact problem. And yes, restarting your computer will make the dock work again and yes many others report that this enables the dock to work again temporarily.Good product, but terrible implementation. Stay away from this unless it is known to be fixed in a new hardware revision. I got the A00 version and it's not surprise that all the hardware issues reported by others were there.

Not Compatible with my operating system (Win-10) Returned Item

Lack of video connection.

Due to an answer by one of the sellers, on a customer question, I thought this was USB 3.0. It's not. But I can still use this for my USB 2.0 devices.

2.5 stars. Received the item in an open container. 1 star deduction.It's hard to tell from the picture because both VGA and serial port slots are similarly shaped, but this does NOT have a VGA connector. It's a real downer that it doesn't because otherwise for my purposes there's really only 4 usb 2.0 slots, not usb 3.0, and no place to connect my monitor unless I purchase a converter to connect through one of the usb ports.It has an old school printer port and two old school mouse/keyboard slots. Could be nice if you have old keyboards / mouse you want to use, but 1 star off for actually lacking VGA, another star off for being disappointed after thinking that it did from the pictures (low res -- thought it did, but didn't). Other reviews seem to indicate that this products lags significantly every time you undock then redock. May have to drop another star if it does. Will return.

Failed after 1 month. I have two of these, one at the office and one at home. The one at home started failing about a month later. When I plugg it, it charges the battery for 4 seconds, then it says "connected, no battery detected" I first though it was the computer, but when I go to the office this problem goes away. no longer a problem.

Bought this along with my XPS 9550 (15" FHD). It has been nothing but problems. First issues were charging, every time I used it I would receive a warning that the power adapter was undersized. If I plugged in my 130W adapter + the dock the warning went away. At one point connecting the power for the dock directly to the wall resolved it but it came back a week later. 1440p monitor on display port would keep cutting out, sound would drop, internet would drop, etc. I would have to unplug the dock from the laptop and power, then plug it back in. I tried all the firmware and bios updates, all the tricks I found online through google and reddit. Nothing worked. I now just connect the power, external monitor, audio, and USB each time I move the laptop.

I was really excited at the prospect of being able to connect all of my peripherals with a single cable. My new Dell Precision 5510 should have been a perfect mate for this dock, but try as I might to get all of the drivers and bios updates installed in the correct order, the thing still doesn't work. The USB ports have power (but don't work other than that) and the HDMI output works fine, but no other functions are available. I've wasted hours fiddling with this thing, so I sent it back and exchanged for the USB 3.0 version.

I don't review much much I will alert people of faulty products. Do not purchase the dual adapter. it connects and disconnects over and over. The chiming never stops. I've tried all the fixes post, but nothing. I have tried to post my problem on the Dell display port forums, but there's been no reply to my posts or those with similar problems.

i purchased 2 of these, they worked fine for a week, one of them suddenly stop working. it does not recognize nothing.i live in Chile and brought it from the US via courier to the US and then another courier to Chile. very frustrating.

This does not work with the latest update of Windows 10 (as of 10/1/2016). There is no working driver and the Dell web site says they are not developing one. The lack of driver causes random freezing of the mouse pointer and desktop for about a quarter second, once or twice a minute.

Very old model and its complicated

No hdmi and the installkept freezing.

Useless item.

Horrible product. Literally caused my laptop to crash to blue screen multiple times. I have only tried a mouse and keyboard as inputs and using the keyboard input caused it to crash to a blue screen, while the mouse would fidget around the screen.

Should have guessed from the low price - EXTREMELY outdated product.

pointless piece of crap.