$149.99
Devices with smaller pop-out features are inherently cool. Take Batman’s Batpod cycle, for instance. So Anker’s Nano Docking Station (13-in-1, with its Removable Hub) instantly adds a bit of cachet with its pull-out USB-C hub, making it convenient to take on the road.
This flexibility doesn’t come cheap. Anker charges about $150 for what is still a USB-C docking station, though with the ability to connect to three displays. This Nano dock (the A83C3) also doesn’t include some of the charging capabilities that you might otherwise associate with other Anker products. There’s not really enough power to quick-charge a smartphone, for example.
(Is it good enough to be added to PCWorld’s best USB-C hubs and docks? Keep reading to find out.)
Anker’s 13-in-1 dock does fit the “nano” bill: it’s 1.57 inches wide and 5.5 inches high. Its depth is just under 4 inches, so this is a compact little dock that uses its space extremely effectively.
A little blue LED encircles the detachable hub on the front of the display, an unobtrusive accent which can be turned off if needed. It only sits vertically, and Anker even warns that the dock can become unstable if it’s placed in another position such as upside down.
Remember, this is a 10Gbps USB-C dock, so its capabilities depend on what laptop you’re connecting it to. I connected multiple laptops, including laptops with an Intel Core Ultra 100 and AMD Ryzen AI 300 chips inside them. Connecting to two docks should only deliver up to 1440p resolution on two displays. But with laptops with USB4 ports or Thunderbolt 4 ports on them, the dock powered two displays at 4K, 60Hz.
Only when I pulled out a Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio (11th-gen Core processor, Thunderbolt 4) did the output drop down to 4K, 30 Hz on one display and 1440p on the other. (Technically, your laptop will need to support DP Alt Mode for display output and power delivery for charging.)
Anker’s quick-start guide offers a tiny HTML glyph link to an online manual, which reveals the specs. Two HDMI 2.0 ports and a DisplayPort 1.4 port provide display connections on the rear, alongside two legacy USB-A ports with 480Mbps connections for a keyboard and mouse. The rear also includes a gigabit Ethernet port.
Technically, this is a three-display dock, with an additional DisplayPort connection on the back. But with just 10Gbps of bandwidth shared between them, things get even more iffy. With a laptop that supports Display Stream Compression (DSC), you may see 4K60 across all three displays. Older hardware may produce 1440p across all three or just 1080p.
On the front of Anker’s dock are a headphone jack, a 10Gbps USB-C port, and the portable hub. Plugged in, you’ll get a small subset of ports: a 5Gbps USB-C port, a 5Gbps USB-A port, and SD and microSD (TF) card slots capable, Anker says, of up to 104MB/s of data transfer.
The dock supplies a rated 100W to the laptop via a 1 meter cable. (The power cord is about 60 inches.) Otherwise, this dock doesn’t supply a huge amount of power: the front USB-A port (inside the hub is rated at 4.5W of power output, while the USB-C port next to it puts out a rated 7.5W. That’s really not much at all, and far beneath the 20 to 45W or so smartphones require.
Unplug the hub (and yes, you can do this while the dock is connected and powered up) and an additional HDMI port is exposed, along with a USB-C power input that can accept up to 15W for the hub and output 85W to the laptop. The hub can be ejected using a small release switch on the top of the dock itself. Note that the hub includes just a 5Gbps USB-C data connection, and there’s no integrated Ethernet jack.
Both the dock and integrated hub appears to be entirely made of plastic. Although all of the heat migrates to the top of the dock, I didn’t notice any thermal issues in my time testing. A small white LED on the back of the dock shows when the dock is powered on. Though the large button on the rear of the dock suggests that it’s a power button, it’s not. Pressing that button turns off the blue LED lighting surrounding the hub. A longer press, surprisingly, does nothing.
That’s one of the only weird things about this dock. The vertical design and effective use of space are terrific, and the dock sits vertically rather comfortably, without any suggestion that it might tip over.
I typically test a dock or hub for multiple days, as per our USB-C hub testing procedures. In this case, I let it sit on my desk as a hub for my work PC, then sit down and test it more extensively.
Honestly, the one thing that consistently annoyed me about this dock was its lightweight GaN charger, which I plugged into a power strip. It uses one of those rectangular wall-wart plugs which overhangs the socket, and I was constantly nudging it out of connection while moving my legs. Reconnecting the displays took about 20 seconds each.
Port spacing seems fine, even with such a tight arrangement. USB-A ports, with a variety of USB keys, need a certain degree of space.
Yes, the dock gets close to the rated 100W output to a laptop, which is probably a lot more than the 45W to 65W most productivity notebooks demand. A 100W charger is more suited to a high-end laptop without a discrete GPU such as a Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio 2. Check your laptop’s manual or charger for specifics. Otherwise, though, there’s really no need to consider this dock to charge individual devices, as the output from each port is just too low.
I reviewed this hub at about the same time I reviewed a competing Mokin USB-C docking station, which I would say offers a better value. Anker’s dock only dropped 8 frames out of 10,000 while streaming a 4K video over the dock’s Ethernet connection, which is near perfect. I then test the performance of an SSD connected to the dock, simulating what it would be like to move data back and forth. Here, the dock delivered slightly less performance than the Mokin’s dock: 150MB/s versus 166 MB/s. While streaming the video, I tested the dock again: 119MB/s. Again, that’s slightly less than the 135MB/s the Mokin dock delivered.
I’m torn. On one hand, I feel like this dock is overpriced for what it offers, especially the lack of charging capabilities. On the other, you can obviously make the case that you’re buying two products for the price of one. Peripheral pricing can be all over the map — Mokin’s for example, says that its dock’s MSRP is $169, but sells it for $99.99 itself while Amazon drops that down to $79. Tariffs obviously still play a role.
I don’t really like the fact that charging options aren’t included with this dock, but many of you already have dedicated charging pads or plugs. For me, that knocks Anker’s dock out of our recommended category. But there’s still a lot to like about Anker’s compact, functional little dock as well.
Author: Mark Hachman
Source: PCWorld
Reviewed By: Editorial Team
