CA Essential Docking Station (DS2000) review: A swing and a miss

Best Prices Today: Cyber Acoustics (CA) Essential Docking Station (DS2000)

$130.00

The Computer Associates Essential Docking Station (DS2000) is one of the more unusual USB-C docking stations you can buy: a long, slim slab of metal that crouches underneath your laptop. Why? Because of a built-in laptop fan of dubious value.

The DS2000 is a powered, traditional USB-C dock. There aren’t any hidden DisplayLink chips inside it to allow it to access a pair of 4K displays. Instead, it appears to operate similarly to its sister dock, the DS1000 that we reviewed earlier this year. That dock takes advantage of a technology that can be found in some recent laptops — what’s known as HBR3 with DSC — to allow the dock to a pair of high-resolution displays. We had much less success with the DS2000, and found that it seemed to work best with a single external display.

The CA DS2000 includes two display ports on the rear of the device: one HDMI connection, and a second DisplayPort connection. There’s also a gigabit Ethernet connection, three 10Gbps USB-A ports on the back, and a slower 5Gbps USB-A port on the side of the dock. A Kensington K-slot lock is included, too.

The dock itself is long and lean: 13.6 inches by 3.2 inches, with a 0.7-inch lip that slopes down to 0.3 inches in front. Weirdly, CA affixed the USB-C cable to the dock, so it can’t be removed. (That might be a plus, if you’re worried about losing it.)

While I was able to connect our test laptop to two displays, only one delivered full resolution. I connected the HDMI port to a 1440p widescreen display, capable of 144Hz, and only received a 1440p/60Hz connection. A second 4K display wouldn’t render above 1080p, at 60Hz. I saw the same result connecting a 4K display; generating 4K output on one and 1080p on the other. When I disconnected and reconnected the displays, the 4K display rendered at 1440p, and the 1440p display compressed everything to a narrow band.

Mark Hachman / IDG

CA claims that the dock will produce 4K30 output on two displays, and maybe it will; Windows, however, wouldn’t let me “dial down” my refresh rate to 30Hz to try splitting the difference. But you may find that this is essentially a dock that’s only capable of a single display output, either 1440p at 60Hz or 4K at 30Hz. That works just fine.

That’s not terribly bad, especially with the DS2000’s price. Our list of the best USB-C hubs, dongles, and docking stations reveals that the DS2000’s price fits in well above a traditional dongle, but below the price of a USB-C docking station or DisplayLink dock.

CA Essential Docking Station (DS2000) performance

The one weird feature that this dock offers is a quasi-laptop fan. Most laptops pull cool air from underneath the laptop, route it over the CPU and SSD, and vent it out through the rear hinge and sides. If that’s the way your laptop works, than placing it atop the docking station may help. A small button allows you to select from three different fan speeds, sucking in air from the rear of the laptop and “feeding” it to where those bottom vents might be. You can also turn off the fan entirely.

In theory, it’s not bad. In reality, the fan seems underpowered — probably good if you don’t want a lot of fan noise. One test laptop I use has side-mounted vents, making the CA2000 useless. The other does have bottom vents, but the fan didn’t seem to do much. I ran a few iterations of 3DMark, a benchmark that combines the CPU and GPU and demands the maximum power that a laptop can provide. But the fan didn’t seem to be effective; in one iteration, the turning the fan on improved performance (5,860 to 6,015). In another, performance fell from 5,478 to 5,346. A third run generated nearly equal results, giving a slight edge to the fan.

Mark Hachman / IDG

There’s no way to secure the laptop on the dock, either, meaning that it might slide around. It all seems to be too much trouble for any real benefit.

Performance is acceptable, assuming you consider this dock to really only power a single display. Streaming a 4K60 video was just fine without any dropped frames; over the 1440p display, the viewport (transferred video) was at 1440p.

Over a single connected 4K display, however, the experience was horrendous. Not only was the display refresh rate just 30Hz, but streamed video was awful: 4,233 or 10,000 frames were dropped, making the video jerk and stumble all over the place.

The dock’s storage performance was very good, however, with the dock generating a score of 147.22MB/s, and a score of 950. (Rival USB-C docks average about 140MB/s and 920 or so.) PCMark measures storage activity across the bus; in a second test, we copied a folder of files driectly from the SSD to the PC’s desktop. That took just 1 minute and 4 seconds, compared to 1 minute and 1 second while the SSD was directly attached.

According to our measurements, the dock transferred about 64W of power to our test laptop. The USB-A ports on the rear supply 2.58W, which is just enough to normally charge a smartphone.

Even with the lower price, we don’t think that there’s enough here to justify a purchase; the fan is just too gimmicky, and the dock configuration is awkward, too. We’d recommend that you consider spending a bit more for one of our recommended DisplayLink docks or simply try a dramatically cheaper USB-C dongle instead.