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New Zealand, Wellington
1 Level
732 Review
51 Karma

Review on Dell 452-BCYT D6000 Universal Dock in Black: A Hassle-free Single Solution by Josh Zuvers

Revainrating 2 out of 5

3 monitors not working in practice

I'll start by saying I'm an IT professional who has spent many years troubleshooting end users with all types of hardware. . This is not an end user issue. The product works well but not if you want to control 3 monitors from your workstation/laptop in a business environment where you bring the laptop to meetings or home for the night and/or you have good habits/need to lock your PC and show timeout. I will be returning this product and will receive another D3100 and a second power supply instead (as the 3100 does not require a refund). TLDR: I recently bought a MacBook Pro 15 and it comes with a Dell D3100 Dock (about $120 at Revain). It worked surprisingly well with one issue - no refunds as it's USB3.0. Tired of pulling the charger out of your pocket. I asked my boss to buy this model which also has 3 monitors and is refundable. I connected this device using the USB-C port of the included "convertible" cable. The first problem I encountered was that not all 3 monitors were recognized. I already had the latest driver (same for my 3100) but I reinstalled it anyway because why not. It drove two monitors and my laptop screen like a champ but didn't recognize the third at all. If I unplugged one of the DisplayPort connectors, the HDMI would light up and everything was fine, but as soon as I plugged the DP back in, the HDMI went blank. After a decent amount of research and insight on the Displaylink forums, I updated the firmware on the device and got good results. All monitors are working now. The second (and ultimately the last straw) problem did not arise immediately. The device drove through all the monitors and loaded as I wanted, nothing overheated and seemed quite solid. Then I went to a meeting with my laptop and when I brought it back and connected the dock (with Windows on the lock screen) it didn't recognize my keyboard. but it hijacked all my monitors and my mouse so i thought it was an accident. I disabled and reinstalled the keyboard and everything was fine. Never had this problem in the 6 weeks of using the 3100. This happened a few more times over the next few days. Then I went to lunch and left the laptop locked. My organization's power settings turned off the monitors after 10 minutes on the lock screen - never had an issue, never on 3100. But when I woke up the laptop the screens flickered and the audio adjusted on all three monitors individually. are newly recognized and the display is expanded to include them one after the other. It probably took about 20 seconds for Windows to be responsive enough to log on. It's huge and happened literally every time I had to wake my displays. but THEN the 3rd monitor from my first issue happened to be sitting at 800 x 600 and went gray to change the setting to 1080 where it should be which required me to completely disable the dock and wait for it to do that Remove 9 connected things finished. off, then plug it back in and wait another 20 until everything is solid again before I can work. Killing my network connection and breaking sessions with my PSA and other DB tools with the wrong shutdown. I've only had it 4 days and I think I've spent more time playing around with it in that time than I've had to plug in the power supply along with the 3100 in over 6 weeks of undocking/hot dock/lock/wake issues 3100 at all, it worked right out of the box and I only had to buy a USB-C to USB3.0 cable to add it. I did some research on this topic and it led me to a couple of obscure settings which I tried to no avail. I've tried re-flashing the firmware from another PC and reinstalling the driver - same results waking up from a locked/powered off state.

Pros
  • 1 year trial
Cons
  • Available in white only