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WavLink WL-UG75PD1-DH2: 30-second review
The WavLink WL-UG75PD1-DH2 docking station is positioned in the premium, high-performance tier of DisplayLink docks, and its price is generally comparable or slightly lower than competing products with similar specifications. The main differentiator is its ability to support an extensive quad-monitor setup at 4K resolution, which is uncommon even among premium docks.
This uses DisplayLink technology to compress video into the available bandwidth using a software driver on the computer end.
Being able to connect multiple devices to the dock with a single cable and charge a laptop simultaneously is ideal, especially when those devices can be external monitors with up to a 10K resolution.
However, to achieve multiple monitors over the limited bandwidth of USB-C comes with a few catches, and compressing video on the fly will be a demanding process for some laptops.
Its advantage is that it will work on almost any computer system, almost irrespective of the OS running, and this technology bypasses some well-documented limitations of Apple MacBook hardware with respect to the number of external monitors supported.
Alongside the monitor connectivity, the WavLink WL-UG75PD1-DH2 has plenty of USB ports, dual SD card readers and a 2.5GbE LAN port.
That level of flexibility comes at a cost, making this one of the more expensive USB-C docks around.
If, for whatever reason, you refuse to upgrade to a laptop with Thunderbolt ports, then this dock might be a solid investment, but I’d read all this review before spashing out.
Price eliminates this from our best laptop docking stations, but it is an interesting alternative for those with only USB-C.
WavLink WL-UG75PD1-DH2: Price & availability
- How much does it cost? $279/£223/€260
- When is it out? It’s available now
- Where can you get it? Direct from WavLink
Many makers of docking stations have high-cost USB-C docks because they assume corporates will buy them, and WavLink is no exception with the WL-UG75PD1-DH2.
Direct from the maker for US customers, this dock costs an eye-watering $279, which, considering you can get a less ambitious USB-C design for just over $50, seems excessive.
That said, Plugable makes a similar product, the UD-3900C4, for almost exactly the same price. And, they’re not the only makers with a product in this area.
European customers pay €260.36, and in the UK, the price is ￡222.95. That these prices have moved significantly from the dollar to pound or euro price points of the past demonstrates that the USA doesn’t get the best deals for Chinese-made hardware these days.
For those seeking a similar product but at a more affordable price, StarTech offers a quad-monitor USB-C dock that utilises the same DisplayLink technology, available on Amazon for only $231.99, representing a significant reduction.
What’s truly sobering is that StarTech also makes a USB4/Thunderbolt dock with four monitor outputs, and that’s only $229.69.
If you have USB4 or Thunderbolt, that dock will offer a better user experience, as it’s got four times the connecting bandwidth.
WavLink WL-UG75PD1-DH2: Specs
|
Compatibility: |
USB-C |
|
Number of Ports: |
15 |
|
Ports front: |
1x USB-A 3.2 Gen 21x USB-C 3.2 Gen 21x USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 with PD30W1x SD4.0: up to 312MBps1x 3.5mm 4-Pole Audio & Mic Jack |
|
Ports back: |
2x DisplayPort2x HDMI: up to 10K(10240×2880)@60Hz1x Ethernet: up to 2.5 Gbps2x USB-A 3.2 Gen 21x USB-C uplink 10Gbps |
|
Downstream power: |
130W |
|
Upstream power: |
100W USB-C |
|
Size: |
26 x 13 x 10 cm/10.24 x 5.12 x 3.94 inches (W x D x H) |
|
Weight: |
?1.36 kg (3 lbs) |
|
Accessories: |
Downlink USB cable with retainer |
WavLink WL-UG75PD1-DH2: Design
- Aluminium construction
- 13 ports
- Proprietary cable
Oddly, the WavLink website states that this machine is made of ABS plastic in its specifications. That’s clearly a mistake, because it feels metal and I’d contest it was mostly aluminium on the outside. That includes the top, sides and underside.
On the front left is a four-layer 3.5mm audio jack that can be used for headphones or a microphone, then a couple of SD card slots, one for MicroSD and the other for standard SD.
Then there are two USB-C ports, with one being able to charge at 30W, and then a single USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port.
On the far right is a power button that lights green when in the on position. There isn’t any positive click to this button, and it could easily be knocked, making it better than nothing, but only that.
The rear has two DisplayPort and two HDMI outputs, alternating from one to the other, a 2.5GbE LAN port, and two USB-A ports. For those counting, that’s thirteen ports, not the fifteen WavLink mentions.
That’s because the maker includes both the power connection and the uplink USB-C to the computer. Since the dock won’t work with either of these disconnected, they shouldn’t be included in the available ports.
Depending on how hard you work them, docks can get hot, and WavLink put slots on the underside and both sides to allow airflow through the dock. This is entirely passive cooling, and the metal case does radiate some of the heat away to help out.
This unit is designed to sit on the edge of a desk, and doesn’t offer the possibility of being used vertically or mounted to a desk or wall.
The power supply is a laptop-style one that is rated for 160W, which seems a little low considering the uplink can deliver 100W and one of the USB-C ports another 30W.
One slight curiosity, and a feature I’ve seen on other WavLink docks, is that the provided uplink USB cable has a custom end with a retaining screw that holds it onto the dock. At the other end, it can be both a USB-A and a USB-C with an adapter that’s connected to the cable.
I like the idea that the cable can’t easily be detached from one end, but should this cable get accidentally damaged, only WavLink can provide a replacement.
Overall, there isn’t anything radical about this design. The finish and styling are minimalist, making it fine for something likely to be viewed on a desk, but it’s hardly the cutting edge of docking station design.
WavLink WL-UG75PD1-DH2: Features
- Bandwidth management
- Power management
- DisplayLink
We are now moving into the section of the review that discusses dock resources and the extent of their oversubscription, which all docks typically experience.
Even Thunderbolt docks operate on the premise that users may not utilise every port simultaneously due to bandwidth limitations. This challenge becomes more pronounced with USB docks, since where a Thunderbolt connection might be up to 40Gbps, or at least 20Gbps, USB 3.2 Gen 2 is only 10Gbps.
Understanding the specifications of this dock requires some reading between the lines, because according to WavLink, the WL-UG75PD1-DH2 is compatible with Thunderbolt 3 and 4, USB-C, USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A and even USB 2.0.
But, the devil in this detail is that on Thunderbolt connections, an assumption is made that the port can downgrade to USB-C, and using this dock with USB 2.0 might technically work, but practically it wouldn’t. Not all Thunderbolt ports can downgrade to USB-C.
And, if it does connect to Thunderbolt, it isn’t as a Thunderbolt 3 or 4 device, but as a USB-C dock. Therefore, the performance of this dock is the same irrespective of what port you use to drive it, with the exception of USB 2.0, which would be terrible.
An essential aspect of most docks is power distribution, and like bandwidth, manufacturers like to oversubscribe that resource as well.
Starting with 160W to play with, this dock offers 100W to the uplink for charging a laptop. It has another 30W available on one of the USB-C ports, and I’d assume that 7.5W is allocated to each of the four USB ports. I’ve no idea how much power the SD card readers draw, the LAN or the video ports. However, I’ve already described 160W of potential use, and running the dock hardware will require at least 20W, I would assume.
I suppose that if you use all the USB ports, less than 100W is sent to the uplink to avoid exceeding the power supply’s specifications. But that is a guess, and I didn’t want to experiment to the point where I let the magic smoke out.
This scenario, where the power sharing assumes that the dock is partially used, isn’t unique to WavLink. Most dock makers do it, but I didn’t want anyone to buy this and assume that using every port doesn’t come with consequences, both in respect of performance and power allocation.
The big selling point of this dock is that it supports four monitors, two via DisplayPort and another two via HDMI. The specification declares that using DisplayPort, the dock can connect to two 8K monitors with a resolution of 7680 4320 at 60Hz. Or, it supports four 4K displays at 3840 x 2160 at up to 144Hz.
There is even an option for a single 10K screen at 60Hz, for the dozen or so people who have one of those.
The caveats to this capability are significant, with the first issue being that it won’t work without a software installation of a driver from DisplayLink. And, I’d also recommend that you install the DisplayLink Manager from the Microsoft Store, as it makes configuring displays much easier.
How a business IT department might feel about these installs could be an issue, since most corporate PCs aren’t configured to allow the user to install drives and apps.
Another snag is that DisplayLink is eating into the bandwidth that other ports on the dock might want to use.
The DisplayLink technology in this dock utilises the Synaptics DL-7000 series hardware, one of a new generation of DisplayLink Pro chips designed to support significantly higher bandwidth, enabling multiple high-resolution displays.
A significant advantage of DisplayLink is that it works across a broad spectrum of operating systems, including Windows, Mac, Linux, Chrome OS, and even Android. On the Mac, it also conveniently gets around the Apple-imposed limit of a single external display on the M1 and M1 MacBooks. But the way this solution works does have some downsides.
What’s critical to understand is that uncompressed 4K 60Hz video requires about 12 Gbps, more than the whole connection to the dock. DisplayLink utilises a maximum of 5Gbps, half that of the uplink, and it uses compression to make this work.
Therefore, the more monitors you use, the more compression is required, which reduces the quality of the displays. This might create artefacts in moving graphics and significant lag if you are trying to do something interactive. It also requires the laptop to compress its output, putting extra demands on the host system.
Interestingly, the Synaptics DL-7000 series is also starting to appear as a feature in Thunderbolt docks, where the amount of bandwidth makes the level of compression required much less.
There are some situations where this could become impractical, but until you have the dock and screens on your laptop, it’s hard to say if yours is one of those.
That any of this works is pretty amazing, but it isn’t without some boundaries as to how it can be used and where it might not provide precisely what the purchaser might expect.
WavLink WL-UG75PD1-DH2: Performance
As I’ve talked about in other docking station reviews, these devices operate in a way where there is a bandwidth pie that is sliced and diced by the hardware to support the connected devices.
The problem here is that each of the USB-A and USB-C ports on it can use all of the 10Gbps that the connection between it and a connected system has available. That doesn’t factor in the four monitor ports, 2.5GbE or the SD card reader.
The classic example of how this limitation kicks into play is if you take two external USB-C drives, each rated at 1,000Mb/s, the limit of USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps).
Copying a file from the PC to the drive or vice versa hits 900-1000Mb/s or higher, but when you copy between them with both connected to the dock, it’s half that speed.
For those using the monitor connection, the bandwidth is halved again, reducing it to 250Mb/s or less.
That’s because half the bandwidth is used to bring the file from one drive to the PC, and the other half is used to simultaneously send it to the second drive over the same cable.
The more things you have going on, the slower each device gets, since the slice of the bandwidth pie becomes progressively smaller.
If we add all the ports together, they add up to roughly 55Gbps on a 10Gbps uplink. It doesn’t matter how clever the electronics in this dock are; after only a few devices are added, the amount of bandwidth for each will be less.
That’s why Thunderbolt 4 and USB4 have a 40Gbps connection, and Thunderbolt 5 has 80Gbps or even a 120Gbps option.
Therefore, if you have unused USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports on the laptop, once the dock is connected, I’d use them for external storage, and not the dock.
WavLink WL-UG75PD1-DH2: Final verdict
The build quality of WavLink products in general is excellent, and this should give many years of service for those using them.
However, I have some concerns about this design, mostly because putting fifteen, or in reality, thirteen ports on a dock that only has 10Gbps seems to be an impractical proposal.
If you connect monitors to this unit, then there will not be enough bandwidth for the other ports to operate fully, for example.
But then, the idea that you would have four monitors, and a laptop with a GPU capable of driving them effectively that doesn’t have Thunderbolt or USB4 ports seems implausible. And if you did have Thunderbolt, while it might work, you could buy a Thunderbolt-specific dock that would have four times this bandwidth to share, and therefore could utilise more ports simultaneously.
In the promotional material, WavLink shows the dock working with dual 8K screens over DisplayPort. Sure, you work for a company that will buy multiple 8K screens, but gives out laptops with only USB-C ports. That makes no sense whatsoever.
If the WL-UG75PD1-DH2 were $150 or even $175, then maybe it would have a use for those with USB-C machines. But at the asking price, it would be a much better choice to pick a Thunderbolt dock with USB-C compatibility, so when that laptop is retired for a better one, you get a dock upgrade too.
If you want to run four external screens on a laptop, then it’s going to need to be a mobile workstation, unless they’re just spreadsheets, and that’s going to have at least one external output and probably dual Thunderbolt ports that can be adapted to video connections.
That makes this device extremely niche, because if you are running a machine capable of driving four or five displays with moving images, then you won’t need a dock with four monitor connections, typically.
I’m sure someone is reading this and thinking that it might solve their problem, and it might, but this level of investment needs to come with some degree of future-proofing, and that’s not obvious in this context.
WavLink WL-UG75PD1-DH2: Report card
|
Value |
Expensive for USB-C |
3.5 / 5 |
|
Design |
Metal constuction but uninspiring |
3.5 / 5 |
|
Features |
Lots of ports, four displays and 100W charging |
4 / 5 |
|
Performance |
Not ideal for file transfers |
3 / 5 |
|
Overall |
Proof that Thunderbolt is the best dock technology |
3.5 / 5 |
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