OWC USB-C Travel Dock review: Compact professionalism on the go

At a glance

Expert's Rating

Pros

• Compact
• A good mix of ports

Cons

• A little on the slow side
• USB-C cable feels a little short for comfort

Our Verdict

OWC’s USB-C Travel Dock provides a nice, compact, affordable alternative to a traditional USB-C dongle.

Price When Reviewed

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OWC’s USB-C Travel Dock isn’t that different than any other hub or dongle, save for its shape: a small rectangular puck that might appeal more than other dongles.

When you take your laptop on the road, I always advise taking along a USB-C hub or dongle, which typically attaches via a short cable. A dongle isn’t the most ergonomically convenient option; it sort of flops around your desk, dragged this way and that by any devices you connect it to.

There’s a small cadre of devices that offer a different approach. One of my favorites, the now-discontinued IOGear Thunderbolt 3 Travel Dock, packed Thunderbolt power inside a compact little plastic slab. Another, the still-available $65 Belkin Thunderbolt 3 Dock Core, does this too. OWC’s USB-C Travel Dock doesn’t include Thunderbolt, but it retains that compact little form factor that I find surprisingly appealing.

Measuring 3.2 inches to a side (and 0.9 inches thick), the OWC USB-C Travel Dock connects to your laptop via a short USB-C cable that measures a bit more than 6 inches. It stores itself neatly into the base of the Travel Dock itself, a nice touch. On the base of the aluminum chassis are four small shallow pads, used to hold the dock in place.

Mark Hachman / Foundry

Technically, this is a 5-in-1 hub, as the name is a bit misleading. I typically equate “docking station” as a powered device; in this case, OWC’s device includes a USB-C port for input power only, accepting up to 100W. On either side of the dock sit a pair of clearly labeled 5Gbps USB-A ports. Otherwise, there’s an Ethernet port of undisclosed speed, an SD 4.0 card reader, and an HDMI 2.0 port.

PCWorld’s roundup of the best USB-C hubs and dongles are based on my recommendations, and a USB-C hub is extremely price-sensitive. (Here’s how we test USB-C hubs at PCWorld.) No one wants to pay $100 when a $30 dongle will offer equivalent features. That’s what I like about OWC’s Travel Dock: At press time, it sits around $30. That’s right smack in the middle of my best picks, which range from $20 to $40.

From a stability standpoint, I didn’t notice any problems while working with the OWC USB-C Travel Dock. It connected to various devices and a single display without issue.

Mark Hachman / Foundry

OWC’s USB-C Travel Dock is a compact, affordable dock that provides tidy alternative to a traditional USB-C dongle.

OWC’s USB-C Travel Dock performed flawlessly, streaming a 4K video across a 4K single screen without a hitch, at 60Hz. (It dropped 8 frames in about 72,000 frames overall.) I’ve seen USB-C docks try and output to two 4K displays, and sometimes struggle, so a single display is perfect. The dock didn’t even heat up to temperatures I’d find warm.

Since the USB-C connection is 10Gbps from the laptop, the more data you push across the USB-C cable, the more congestion will occur. While simultaneously transferring data from an SSD and while streaming a 4K video, I noticed evidence of congestion in hitches and stuttering. That’s to be expected, however.

Mark Hachman / Foundry

PCMark returned a score of 97.45MB/s while a test SSD was connected. That’s slower than I expected, though I wasn’t sure if OWC’s dock would deliver performance comparable to the Dockcase Smart USB-C Hub 10-in-1 Explorer Edition, which delivered performance of about 130MB/s, accompanied by some stability problems.

I have to mark down for that, but otherwise OWC’s USB-C Travel Dock ran smoothly, cooly, and affordably. I recommend it.