HiDock H1 review: A disappointing USB-C dock, but with big potential

HiDock’s H1 USB-C dock represents a sharp departure (or is it an evolution?) away from most contemporary docking stations. Some of the standard connections on this USB-C dock feel almost like an afterthought, compared to this dock’s true purpose: serving as an AI-powered speakerphone of sorts, with an associated service for transcribing and summarizing calls. It all feels fresh and new.

The problem is this: The accompanying HiNotes transcription app is just an annoyance or two away from being truly worthwhile. But HiDock has made the app a revenue play, and a lot of the H1’s value unravels as a result. Still, for $279 there’s a lot here — so it’s tough to simply dismiss this dock out of hand.

Further reading: See our roundup of the best USB-C dongles and docks to learn about competing products.

You can’t even characterize the H1’s hardware as “just” a dock. The HiDock H1 consists of two connected devices, all tied to your laptop via a USB-C cable that’s about 1 meter long (39 inches) and transfers a rated 100W of power. The main dock includes a large speaker, with volume controls, a noise-cancellation slider, and buttons to place and hang up calls. But there’s also a separate Bluetooth earpiece, tucked into a charging cradle which magnetically connects to the main dock itself.

Otherwise, the “dock” functions are fairly normal. On the rear of the speaker are two HDMI 2.0 ports, two 10Gpbs USB ports (USB-A and USB-C), a 5Gbps USB-A port, 2.5Gbps Ethernet, a power port. A second 10Gbps USB-C port with 18W charging capabilities, and UHS-II rated microSD and SD card slots can be found on the side. Again, that’s a lot.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Mark Hachman / IDG

Mark Hachman / IDG

With all that, you could make the argument that this dock deserved a Thunderbolt connection. It doesn’t, though. The H1 supplies USB-C with Display Stream Compression (DSC), which means that it may support two displays at 4K resolution. On my default (11th-gen Core) laptop, it delivered 4K on one display at 30Hz, and 1440p on a second at 60Hz. On a second laptop, with a 14th-gen Intel Core inside it, the dock powered two 4K displays at 60Hz apiece as expected. Unfortunately, docks with DSC technology inside benefit from modern, up-to-date hardware, and laptop makers do a woefully poor job of telling you if your laptop will support the standard.

HiDock’s H1, then, is more accurately compared against USB-C dongles and docks, but its price pushes upwards into the class of Thunderbolt docks.

The dock itself is a little chunkier than you might normally expect. With the earpiece cradle connected, the length of the dock is about 8.25 inches, and the depth is 3.5 inches. But the speaker, which points up at an angle, pushes the height to 2.75 inches or so. That’s not a big deal at all, but it does mean that the dock may not fit under a display. And at 1.15 pounds, this is a desktop device.

The H1 works pretty well as a standalone audio dock. The mono speaker (7W full band driver, 5W tweeter) delivers bold, loud sound, with the volume dial connected to your laptop’s volume controls. Tapping the volume dial pauses any audio streams you have playing, and lights up a small LED ring to alert you.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Mark Hachman / IDG

Mark Hachman / IDG

I’m less impressed by the audio earpiece. First, you’ll need to jack up the volume to maximum to hear anything. You also may need to dial down the background noise-cancellation slider to its middle point and even lower. (When playing back Spotify, the audio cut in and out in an otherwise quiet room until I lowered the slider.) There’s not a lot of range to the sound, either; the earpiece works best for calls, not music. I also had trouble simply clipping the earpiece to my ear, though I attribute that more to my preference for earbuds. HiDock rates the talk time at eight hours, which I did not specifically test.

There’s no headphone jack; the integrated speaker and earpiece is all the dock offers in that regard.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Mark Hachman / IDG

Mark Hachman / IDG

I simply could not get the HiDock to record a call or audio that I spoke into it, though, which is one of the H1’s selling points. The dock paired with my phone easily via Bluetooth, and I was able to place and then hang up calls using the dock itself. But there’s a dedicated HiDock key on the upper right that is supposed to begin recording if held down for 1.5 seconds. There’s a similar button on the earpiece that, when held, should do the same thing. Neither seemed to work, even when the HiNotes app was open and connected.

The AI angle: HiDock’s HiNotes app

The accompanying HiNotes web app allows you to use the dock to record and transcribe audio, including calls, which, on paper, is an extremely handy feature.

HiDock promises that the H1 comes with “lifetime transcription,” and that appears to be true. You’re encouraged to download the HiNotes app on your laptop, Chromebook, or Android/iOS phone. Each HiDock comes with a complementary “membership,” the name for the midrange plan. The basic plan is free, but you only receive 30 notes. The midrange membership plan gives you an unlimited number of notes — but, like the free plan, each note is only 10 minutes long.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Mark Hachman / IDG

Mark Hachman / IDG

You’ll need to pay ($12.99/1,200 minutes, or $119.99 for 12,000 minutes) for a “Pro” subscription that unlocks AI summaries and manual speaker identification. If you upload a file, though, the file can be up to four hours in length. The upshot? You’ll eventually need to pay HiDock something to take full advantage of the H1’s capabilities.

It gets weirder, however. The HiNotes app is not a native app but a web app, both on your phone, computer, and Chromebook. And while the desktop apps can manage your recordings, it appears that you can only record from the mobile app. I thought that you’d be able to record a phone call or audio just by tapping a button on the dock or earpiece, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. The integration just isn’t as tightly woven as I would hope.

HiDock gave me some minutes as part of the Professional subscription to play around with. When I tried transcribing using the “membership” that accompanied the HiDock, HiNotes recorded in short snippets and phrases. After being upgraded to the professional plan, the transcription auto-formatted into paragraphs. The formatting was odd, too, offering a different UI depending on whether I was viewing the app in portrait or landscape mode, and on a small or a full-sized monitor. It was a little disconcerting.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Mark Hachman / IDG

Mark Hachman / IDG

But the recognition was very good in both cases. I would have liked the recording and the text to sync (Microsoft OneNote did this years ago!) and I had to manually tag the speaker every single time. Otherwise, though, it was pretty impressive.

For me, these nitpicks paled in comparison to the 10-minute limitation. Most of us schedule conference calls in blocks of 30 minutes to a full hour, so a 10-minute audio note really doesn’t cut it. The AI summaries are rather good though, and help to make sense of the conversation. If you came to this review wondering whether I’d choose HiNotes over an AI-powered service like Otter.ai, the answer is: no, I wouldn’t.

HiDock H1: Performance

It’s somewhat easy to forget that the H1 is a dock, too! The HiDock H1 was generally stable — though, as noted above, what resolutions it supports will depend on your laptop. The H1 also occasionally dropped the 4K signal for a second or two, resulting in a black screen but not actually disconnecting the display itself. Otherwise, though, the dock was stable.

Simply as a dock, the H1’s performance was quite good. The dock passed 94W of power to the laptop (at or near the all-time high) from the compact little 150W power brick. While the dock’s metal chassis stays absolutely cool, the brick heats up quite a bit, a little alarmingly so. Pick up the dock, and you’ll find that all of the heat is routed to the bottom, which gets quite warm.

The dock also supplied 14.4W out of the USB-C charging port on the side, which will fast-charge a smartphone. Again, this is quite impressive. Even the other USB-C port puts out 6.7W, which is quite good.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Mark Hachman / IDG

Mark Hachman / IDG

The dock dropped 32 frames out of 10,000 while streaming, which was okay. I didn’t notice any chop or stutter while streaming, which is important. The dock passed along 143MB/s while running PCMark’s storage test on my test SSD, on the high side of performance, although copying a folder full of various files to and from my PC’s desktop across the USB-C cable completed in a generally average amount of time.

I’m moderately impressed with the HiDock’s performance. I can’t deny the value here. As a dock, HiDock’s H1 has a lot to offer, from the dock hardware to the earpiece to the integrated speaker to the HiNotes transcription capabilities. But I can’t help but think that it just doesn’t live up to what it promises: The earpiece is mediocre, and the HiNotes application is really designed to lock you into a recurring payment to HiDock, even after “buying” the transcription service that accompanies the dock itself.

The HiDock H1 offers a ton for your money, but if all the features don’t deliver as promised, what then? The HiDock H1 wins 3.5 out of 5 stars, balancing between a concerted effort to deliver something new and innovative, but falling short.

Should you buy the HiDock H1? I’d hold off. I think that HiDock needs to take a generation or two and smooth out the wrinkles. HiDock’s effort is worthy of applause, and there’s potential here. But it’s not fully achieved within the HiDock H1.