Home > Consumer Reviews > Toshiba Dynadock U Universal USB Connect Docking Station

I am using this docking station to connect my Dell laptop (XP Home) to an Acer 22" widescreen LCD monitor via a DVI cable. I have also connected my keyboard, mouse, printer, backup drive, and speakers to this device. They are all working well though there are some issues.

First the pros:
1) I am able to get higher resolutions (up to 1680 by 1050) though for personal preference I have set it to 1440 by 900.
2) I am able to view DVDs in full screen and also video chat using Skype without any problems.
3) For graphics/videos it is using drivers from DisplayLink, which has good support. They seem to be actively working to resolve any lingering issues and you can always download the latest drivers directly from the DisplayLink web site. I upgraded mine to the latest from their site.

Issues:
1) The installation wasn't painless. For some reason the audio didn't work at first and I had to re-install the audio drivers from the CD separately to resolve that issue.
2) I am unable to view videos from hulu.com and YouTube in full-screen mode. I am hoping DisplayLink will fix this in a future update.

Other thoughts:
DisplayLink website also provides the beta drivers for Windows 7 Beta. I installed that too (on Windows 7 Beta) and it was able to detect my monitor and set higher resolutions. However, the mouse movements, animations, and video are still somewhat slow and choppy on Windows 7 Beta. On XP, I didn't have any of these issues.

I was very intrigued by the concept of the Video via USB aspect of this docking station. It's handled via a technology from a company called DisplayLink (www.diskplaylink.com). I read the reviews on Amazon and other websites that said that the video was passable for office applications and such, but not for games. My main use for the device was for my laptop at home, which I use mainly for office applications, software development, and the occasional video.

When the device arrived it was well built and looked nice. I like that they provided the optional stand so that it can sit upright or on it's side. I unboxed the docking station and proceeded to download the newest drivers and such from the Toshiba website (had to go to the DisplayLink site to get the video drivers as I'm using Vista 64-bit). Once everything was installed the docking station did work, but the video performance was just not nearly good enough for my tastes. If I took a window and moved it around the screen there was a noticable lag. If I was just typing you didn't notice, but moving windows and selecting things with the mouse was quite stuttered.

I did a speed test with the ethernet cable plugged via the docking station using speedtest.net. The results were as good as the ethernet plugged directly into the laptop.

I connected the docking station to my speakers and they sounded good, except that there seemed to be some stuttering of the playback from time to time, usually when the system was pegged doing something. When I jacked the speakers into the laptop directly and applied the same load to the machine the stuttering did not occur, which leads me to believe the docking station just couldn't handle it.

I went to youtube and played several videos, moving the window from my laptop to the monitor to see the differences. On the laptop it played without hiccup, but on the monitor it often appeared jumpy. The CPU would spike when I was watching the video on the monitor as well, which was the drivers compressing the signal to send across the USB to the monitor. The performance just isn't there.

I never got to the point of connecting other USB devices to the unit.

Overall, I'm very satisfied with this product. Instead of having 6-7 cords I plug and unplug into my laptop every single time I take it with me, there's just one. That's incredibly convenient. Also, my laptop has just 3 USB ports, and the dock has 6, so I can keep all my devices plugged in all the time. And when I want to eject the dock, I don't have to take care of them one by one... there's a special icon for "undocking" which allows you to eject the whole dock.

There is one compatibility issue however. So right now on my laptop, I'm dual booting Windows Vista and Windows 7. I use 7 almost all the time, because it simply is much better than Vista. The one problem I've had with 7 though, is that I cannot install the video driver for this dock. (You see, to get the dock to work with your audio, video and network, you have to install a driver for each of them.) I've tried several times to install both the driver that came on the disc, and the latest one from the site. And every single time, my computer would crash, and I would not be able to restart 7 because some files were corrupt or something. I had to do a system restore every time. Eventually I gave up, and resorted to plugging my VGA cord in my laptop like I did before purchasing the dock. Not that big a deal though. I mean it's understandable... Windows 7 hasn't even been released yet, and nobody's really had a chance to create drivers for it.

So that's the one problem that I've had with this dock and Windows 7. Not sure if this is the case with Vista, because like I said, I don't really use it. Let me note, however, that at one point after I installed the driver, I did have a few minutes with the monitor displaying, and everything worked great. I had a monitor, speakers, a mouse, a keyboard, an external hard drive, a TV tuner, a printer, and a network cable all plugged in, and everything worked fine... no lag at all.

I'd say if you're looking for a dock, this is probably the best one out there. Has everything an average user could possibly need, and works fantastically. Well, almost...



EDIT: I have to mention, my monitor's resolution is 1920x1200 and the dock had no problem displaying this the one time I got it to work. And like I said, even though I had like 7 different things going on over one USB cord, there was absolutely no lag. I feel like I have to mention this because I saw a few reviews which complained about it. So if it's slow, it's mostly likely your system, and not the dock.

The Dynadock U works very well docking both of my family's Dell laptops to our DVI monitor, printer, mouse, keyboard and speakers. After performed a lot of research and now using the product, I'm pretty sure this was the best choice for our setup and usage, which is primarily a home office (i.e. no intense graphics). The only negative is that the Dynadock does not work as a power source for a laptop so working off of battery or using up the laptop's AC adaptor is necessary. I knew this before I bought it based on other reviews, so I was not surprised by this. However, it is an inconvenient limitation.

I bought this product with the hopes of watching DVDs and other video on my external monitor (my computer is a new Toshiba Satellite laptop). I should have known, though...it is too good to be true. You can't expect to run mouse, keyboard, audio, internet, AND DVD quality video over a single USB connection.

I tried updated my graphics chipset drivers, and using the latest drivers from DisplayLink (the technology that Toshiba licensed for the dynadock) and it didn't help. Your experience may vary, but I got a black screen in WMP and with my DVD player software that came with my laptop.

It's a great idea, but probably needs to wait for USB 3.0 (next year?) so that the bandwidth is there for video streams...