Ugreen Maxidok 17-in-1 Thunderbolt 5 Docking Station Review

Design and Features

• Compact and solid build
• Vast array of modern ports
• Handy accessories included

The Maxidok 17-in-1 Thunderbolt 5 Docking Station looks a little different from other laptop docking stations out there, opting for a small cubed shape when a lot of rivals are either hefty vertical towers or long horizontal desk hogs.

Size-wise, it isn’t too dissimilar from the latest Mac Mini, meaning it’s nice and compact. Build quality is strong, with a dark grey aluminium shell that fits the Apple aesthetic and gives this unit some heft; the sides also have copper-coloured accents with venting holes to provide a little bit of flair alongside a Ugreen logo on the top.

The ventilation holes on the sides of the unit are for passive cooling, while a fan inside the dock provides active cooling for more demanding workflows.

The ports on the Maxidok 17-in-1 Thunderbolt 5 Docking Station are accessible, with the front panel housing a power button and indicator LED, along with separate MicroSD and SD card readers.

The SD card readers are potentially faster than a lot of the ones you’ll find in modern ultrabooks, being rated for up to 312Mbps, as they’re both UHS-II-rated, as long as you’re using a card that’ll take advantage of the higher-speed interface.

There is also a headphone jack and a trifecta of USB-C ports, two of which share up to 60W of power for fast charging a laptop, phone, or other devices.

The main attraction is the rear I/O of this Ugreen unit, though, with an upstream Thunderbolt 5 port to your laptop handling the rest of the crowd of ports that provides up to 140W of power to the host device. To add to this, there are two further Thunderbolt 5 ports for hooking up external monitors, fast external SSDs and such, plus a full-size DisplayPort 2.1 for another monitor. 

For reference, Thunderbolt 5 doubles data speeds from 40Gbps to bi-directional 80Gbps, and up to 120Gbps in ‘boost mode’ for higher display bandwidth, which technically means it’s capable of up to 8K/60Hz or 4K/240Hz, depending on the laptop you’re using and the ports it comes with. 

Moreover, for those connecting high-speed SSDs, Thunderbolt 5 also provides a hefty bandwidth increase with up to 64Gbps PCIe 4.0 available, and transfer speeds of up to 6200MB/s – that means you’ll be able to take advantage of any fast Gen 4 SSD you plug in at nearly full pelt.

You also get 2.5-Gig Ethernet for stable and brisk wired networking, alongside three 10Gbps USB-A ports for legacy devices and peripherals, and separate audio and mic jacks. On the underside is an M.2 slot for adding additional SSD storage, which supports up to 8TB drives, and has a hefty metal heatsink that means the slot is sunk quite far into the unit.

All of this is powered by a hefty 12V DC power brick, which is nearly as large as the Maxidok 17-in-1 Thunderbolt 5 Docking Station itself; nonetheless, as this dock can put out up to 240W of power to compatible devices, it’s certainly required.

Ugreen also bundles a range of region-specific power cables in the box, plus a proper Thunderbolt 5-capable USB-C cable and an M.2 screwdriver for undoing the enclosure on the base of the Maxidok 17-in-1 Thunderbolt 5 Docking Station.

Performance

• Fast charging to my MacBook Pro
• Convenient means of connecting everything I needed to
• Permissions need to be granted before it can work

During my time with the Maxidok 17-in-1 Thunderbolt 5 Docking Station, I hooked it up to my main 16-inch M1 Pro-powered MacBook Pro work laptop and used it in conjunction with a range of devices to best judge its usability.

I used the bundled Thunderbolt 5 USB-C port to connect my MacBook to the docking station, which not only makes it the brains of the operation, but with up to 140W of power delivery, also charges my laptop up briskly to boot.

When hooking up an external display, I was initially greeted with no signal, but it turns out that macOS needed permissions to connect to the dock before anything would work – that’s just a useful troubleshooting tip if you get no display out over either one of the rear USB-C ports or the DisplayPort 2.1 port on the unit.

My 16-inch M1 Pro-powered MacBook Pro unfortunately doesn’t support full-fat Thunderbolt 5 output, and instead has three Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports, meaning its display out capabilities max out at 6K/60Hz, rather than the 8K/60Hz that Ugreen touts.

Nonetheless, I had no trouble using it at 4K/144Hz with my Philips Evnia 32M2N8900 monitor hooked up to the docking station via the Thunderbolt 4-capable USB-C cable that came with the monitor initially. With a compatible Thunderbolt 5 monitor, though, you may be able to reap the full benefits of 4K/240Hz output over USB-C.

The vast array of ports also allowed this Maxidok 17-in-1 Thunderbolt 5 Docking Station to become the central hub of desktop connectivity, and it was soon easy to try and fill the ports up with an SD card from my camera, a wired mechanical keyboard, wired networking and a spare SSD on the underside to conveniently add storage to the 512GB internal capacity of my MacBook when I needed to.

This dock is designed primarily for more intensive power users than me, and I still had ports I could have used when I thought I’d connected all my devices. It goes to prove the power of an apparent 17-in-1 docking station, and what you can really do with it.

Should you buy it?