Belkin High-Speed Docking Station

Most manufacturers offer optional docking stations to allow their laptops to be plugged into a more traditional set-up, but they tend to be both pricey and proprietary. Belkin’s High-Speed Docking Station, on the other hand, does much the same thing for any laptop with an ExpressCard/34 slot.

It sits on one end and has single socket for connection to the laptop on the front, with a bevy of ports at the rear. Non-OEM docking stations tend to limit themselves to providing extra USB and network ports, since that’s all the USB 2.0 connection that most models rely on can support.

ExpressCard, on the other hand, has much more bandwidth and so the Docking Station can also offer on-board 5.1 audio, and on-board graphics that can drive an external monitor up to 1600 x 1200 in 32-bit colour.

Unfortunately, the DVI and VGA ports don’t support two separate monitors — they both output the same image. You can use an external monitor as a secondary display to your laptop screen though, or disable the laptop and stick with a single external display. We would have liked the option to use the laptop screen as a secondary display to an external monitor too, but it isn’t available.

The Docking Station’s graphics aren’t particularly powerful and don’t support either 3D or Vista’s Aero Glass theme. This is no big deal, but we were disappointed to see that it didn’t support font smoothing for a clearer display, either.

We were also surprised at the poor network performance of the Ethernet port. It could only manage a transfer rate of around 20Mbit/s, compared to 75Mbit/s for the laptop’s own Ethernet port and 17Mbit/s for its on-board 802.11g Wi-Fi. Still, the ExpressDock is a cheap and easy way to use your laptop at a desk and software updates could well address the display issues.

Specifications

VGA, DVI (1600 x 1200), 5 x USB 2.0, 5.1 audio, line-in, S/PDIF, Ethernet, ExpressCard/34 Part code F5U273UK Warranty Lifetime Size 175 x 157 x 54mm