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Going Ultra High Def with the Plugable USB-C Triple Display 4K Docking Station with USB Power Delivery

With the Plugable USB-C Triple Display 4K Docking Station with USB Power Delivery, Plugable continues to advance its USB Type-C dock product line which includes the Plugable USB-C Docking Station with Power Delivery / Charging (Model UD-CA1) and Plugable USB-C Triple Display Docking Station with USB Power Delivery.

The Plugable USB-C Triple Display 4K Docking Station with USB Power Delivery looks a lot like the Plugable USB-C Triple Display Docking Station with USB Power Delivery but now supports 4K@60hz.

The Plugable USB-C Triple Display 4K Docking Station with USB Power Delivery comes in recognizable Plugable packaging.

One of the nice things about Plugable packaging is all the information that Plugable provides about the product and interface technologies used.

Opening up the Plugable USB-C Triple Display 4K Docking Station with USB Power Delivery, we can see that it comes with a USB 3.1 Gen 1 (5 Gb/s) Type-C to Type-C cable, a 100W AC power adapter, and documentation.

The back of the Plugable USB-C Triple Display 4K Docking Station with USB Power Delivery has three downstream USB 3.1 Gen 1 based USB Type-A ports, one upstream USB 3.1 Gen 1 based USB Type-C port with USB Power Delivery support to charge the connected PC, a Gigabit Ethernet port, two DisplayPort 1.2 ports supporting 4K@60hz, and one HDMI1.4 port supporting 4K@30hz. The Plugable USB-C Triple Display 4K Docking Station with USB Power Delivery supports different source power profiles including 15 watts (5 volts @ 3 amps), 27 watts (9 volts @ 3 amps), 36 watts (12 volts @ 3 amps), and 60 watts (20 volts @ 3 amps), allowing you to charge the majority of notebook PC's, tablets, and phones.

If your computer doesn't support DisplayPort Alt-Mode over USB Type-C, the Plugable USB-C Triple Display 4K Docking Station with USB Power Delivery also supports DisplayLink based 4K video.

The front of the Plugable USB-C Triple Display 4K Docking Station with USB Power Delivery has one downstream USB 3.1 Gen 1 based USB Type-A port and one downstream USB 3.1 Gen 1 based USB Type-C port. There is also a 3.5mm audio in and out jacks for headphones and microphone.

As always, Plugable has the URL of the product placed on the product itself, this time placed at the bottom of the base.

The Plugable USB-C Triple Display 4K Docking Station with USB Power Delivery is vertically based, allowing you to maximize your connectivity expansion with the minimal amount of desktop real estate. We will be taking a closer look at how the Plugable USB-C Triple Display 4K Docking Station with USB Power Delivery supports 4K and USB Power Delivery in several future reviews.

Here we can see how the Plugable USB-C Triple Display 4K Docking Station with USB Power Delivery supports power using the USB Power Test App from Granite River Labs with the Granite River Labs USB Power Delivery Compliance C2 Tester to perform the following tests.

The USB Power Test App first negotiates a power contract for every PDO supported by the Plugable dock, and increases the load gradually to find the threshold where over current protection (OCP) kicks in and voltage and current start to drop for safety reasons.

The USB Power Test App reports out all the PDO's supported by the Plugable dock and their OCP thresholds.

PDO	OCP	Percentage
PDO#1 Fixed: 5V 3A	3.52	117.4%
PDO#2 Fixed: 9V 3A	3.5	116.8%
PDO#3 Fixed: 12V 3A	3.5	116.8%
PDO#4 Fixed: 15V 3A	3.49	116.5%
PDO#5 Fixed: 20V 3A	3.5	116.7%

The USB Power Test App from Granite River Labs then takes this data to produce an I-V curve which graphically shows the relationship between voltage and current for each PDO. We can observe as the current increases beyond the OCP threshold, the voltage immediately shuts off.