"Lenovo ThinkPad Thunderbolt 3 Dock 2.Gen" vs. "Dell D6000 Universal Dock"

I do have a computer setup that does involve two 24" TFTs and two computers: a personal Brix GB-BRR7H-4800 (powered by a AMD RYZEN R7-4800U) and for business I do have a Lenovo T490 (powered by a i7-8665U).

For the notebook, I prefer some kind of docking station so that I may plug and unplug the notebook quickly. We had docking stations in the past where notebooks had to be physically put onto. Those docking stations had to be bought for each specific device or at least for a specific hardware series of one single vendor. Therefore, this was some kind of a hardware lock-in effect because you did not want to change your notebook vendor in order to lose the invested money in your docking station.

In recent years, the Thunderbolt technology allowed for docking stations connected via a single USB-C cable. So instead of putting your notebook physically onto a docking station, you just have to plug in a single USB-C cable. With this connection, you can recharge your battery as well as transmit all kinds of data signal such as DisplayPort, USB and much more.

The big advantage is that those expensive docks are now vendor-independent as long as the hardware offers a Thunderbolt port with a matching Thunderbolt version.

Two years ago, I had the opportunity to by a Dell D6000 Universal Dock for a very good price. This was my first approach with Thunderbolt or a Thunderbolt dock.

As I found out later, it required on a technology called DisplayLink to submit video signal to external monitors using the notebook CPU. Being new in that business, I took this necessity for granted.

Running Xubuntu 20.04 LTS GNU/Linux, I followed this directions on setting up DisplayLink. It worked. So I could connect my two TFTs with both of my computers. Each TFT has at least two inputs and so I used HDMI for one of the computers and DisplayPort for the other each. Using a USB switch, I'm able to switch my computer by manually toggling their input signal and pushing the button on the USB switch.

Let me mention that I don't play computer games so video performance was never an important issue to me.

Unfortunately, I sometimes recognized a certain sluggishness on my T490 notebook running on the Dell D6000 when switching virtual desktops that came with a high CPU load. This issue appeared a couple of times during a work week and it annoyed me but was not a complete showstopper.

As I mentioned this in a meeting with some friends, I was told that DisplayLink is known to eat up CPU rather easily since it is required to push video content through the cable. Furthermore, the then new Lenovo ThinkPad Thunderbolt 3 Dock 2.Gen would not require DisplayLink which gives the hardware a performance bump.

I looked around on the Internet and found a few sources like this:

There are merits of the DisplayLink approach, but in general they should be avoided for single and most dual-monitor workstations where other solutions of similar cost are available. For 3+monitors they are absolutely the best solution and what I recommend to customers.

What a bummer.

The Lenovo dock comes with a price tag beyond 270€. A bit high for fixing this occasional inconvenience in my point of view.

A few weeks ago, I gave up on my resistance and ordered the Lenovo dock for 278€. In order to be as precise as possible: the Lenovo part number is 40AN0135EU. There are multiple variants of the dock and I chose the one that offers a wide range of connection options but doesn't provide the 200+ Watts of power supply I don't need.

I can confirm: DisplayLink is not required any more to run external displays. This resulted in a much better performance for, e.g., switching virtual screens and the overall performance sluggishness vanished.

However, for driving my two external 24" TFT I have to use the one "USB-C 3.1 Gen 2/Thunderbolt 3" port which is part of a combination port I almost did not recognize as USB-C. With the "3.1 Gen" ports, I can't use two external monitors at my 2560×1440 resolution, only one. Be careful to use the right port.

The Lenovo dock is more expensive than the Dell, especially in my case where I paid less than 100€ for the Dell D6000. The performance is much better with the Lenovo and you therefore should avoid the DisplayLink technology as much as possible.

If you don't have a dock and you plan to buy one, you should think of investing the money for the newer one without DisplayLink.