Hello all!
I hope this message finds you well!
I wanted to give props to Kensington for making an AWESOME universal USB 3.0 docking station that works perfect with my Surface Pro 2 tablet! For business use, dual monitors & Ethernet are a must. The challenge with the Surface tablet, and quite a few other devices, is you only have the option for the devices’ display and 1 external monitor. This works great some of the time, but others, is simply not enough real estate. In comes Kensington to the rescue.
I did my research before setting on this particular unit. Since I was going to be using it solely with the Microsoft Surface Pro 2 tablet, my initial inclination was to go out and pickup the dock specifically tailored for the Surface. First off, I could not find it anywhere in stock. All things considered, I am glad I did not find one. The dock, although sleek and made for the Surface, still gave you the limitation of a single display (for now, as daisy chaining is coming apparently). So, long story short, I couldn’t find that one around Atlanta, but I had to have one to be able to use the tablet the way I had envisioned. So, I evaluated the ASUS, Kensington & J5create.
First off, since I wasn’t going to be using the dock for an actual laptop, aesthetically, the Kensington was the best choice out of the gate. The tower design makes for a sleek desktop fit requiring only a single USB 3.0 cable to your device. There were similar feature sets between the other two units; however, the true DUAL external display support & GigE network port was the primary reason I chose the Kensington. Keep in mind, this is true dual display on the dock itself using USB3 from the device, my display out port on the Surface is open at the moment, so technically, I could probably hook up a projector to it for a 4th actual screen (just not sure how the resolution support would work, but 3 is perfectly fine for me including the tablet display :))
And the best part??….. NO LAG ON THE DISPLAY!!
That’s right, both external monitors at 1080p on each, run video perfectly fine, don’t lag or jerk when dragging windows around, etc. Both external displays are fully usable.
Below are some OEM pics as well as pics of my workstation.
*There have been some negative reviews on this particular Kensington unit when used with Windows 8 and/or Windows 8.1. I am here to tell you using it with Windows 8.1 on my Surface Pro 2 it works like a CHARM! No issues what-so-ever! All I had to do was jump on their website and download the updated driver.
