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Your laptop never has enough ports–especially if it's the Macbook Air this guide was written on. That forces you to carry an array of dongles so you can plug everything in. Fortunately, there's a better way. USB hubs can expand the number and kind of ports available, and USB docks let you turn a laptop into a full-blown workstation with one plug. After testing several USB hubs and docks, these are the best we've found for different needs.
Looking for other home-office gizmos and gadgets? We've got a number of guides that can help, like our Best Work-From-Home Gear, Best USB Flash Drive, and Best Portable External Storage Drives roundups.
Update November 2023: We added the Satechi Dual Dock Stand, Plugable Dual 4K Display Horizontal Docking Station, Plugable USB-C Triple Display Docking Station 13-in-1, Satechi Thunderbolt 4 Media Pro Dock, and OWC Thunderbolt Go Dock. We also added Honorable Mentions section with Plugable UD-3900C, Plugable USB-C Triple Display Docking Station, Satechi Triple 4K Display Docking Station, and Plugable Dual Monitor Horizontal Docking Station.
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There's a gray area between USB hubs and docks because they do (mostly) the same thing: add more ports and connectors to your computer. However, there are some slight differences, and it's worth understanding them before you buy one.
USB hubs are smaller, cheaper dongles that can add extra USB ports, SD card readers, display outputs, or a headphone jack. These often don't supply extra power, so you might be unable to charge gadgets plugged into them. They're also portable enough to throw in your laptop bag to use on the go.
USB docks are often larger and more expensive and are designed to spend most of their time on your desk. They often come with their own power supply, so they can charge other devices, and have multiple monitor outputs and Ethernet connections. If you frequently use your laptop at a desk, a dock can let you quickly connect it to a keyboard, mouse, monitors, and any other peripherals simultaneously.
This Anker USB hub is the one I carry in my camera bag everywhere. It plugs into the USB-C port on your laptop and provides two USB-A 3.0 ports, an HDMI output, and both a full-size and a MicroSD card reader. It's a versatile little thing that lets you plug in peripherals to your laptop, transfer data between your devices, and hook up your laptop to a projector or monitor at a moment's notice (provided you have an HDMI cable). Best of all, it's quite affordable.
Don't have a USB-C port on your laptop? This AmazonBasics hub will do the trick, even if it's about as bare-bones as hubs can get. It plugs into one USB-A port and gives you four more, supporting up to USB 3.0 speeds. You can use the hub by itself to plug in peripherals or flash drives, but if you jack in the included power adapter, the hub can charge gadgets plugged into it.
The USB-C port on recent iPad models means you're often forced to choose between charging or plugging in an accessory. This hub from Twelve South can fix that without adding too much bulk. It plugs directly into the USB-C port on the bottom of the tablet and offers up a headphone jack (yay!), a USB-A port, an HDMI output, and an extra USB-C port. It also comes with a short USB-C extension cable—handy if you have a thick case over your iPad that obscures the port a bit.
Twelve South recommends it for iPads, but we've used it with MacBooks and other laptops with no issues. Check out our Best iPad Accessories guide for more.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the USB hub you carry around with you had some storage of its own? This one from Satechi can (sort of) do that. In addition to the extra USB ports and 4K HDMI output it provides, it's also an external M.2 solid state drive enclosure. Open the panel on the back and you can slot in an internal SSD card and access it whenever you plug the hub into your computer. It's an incredibly handy feature that, frankly, more USB hubs and docks should include.
Just know that the M.2 SATA SSD is not included. One-terabyte drives like this one from Western Digital or this one from Samsung will do the job. (They come in other storage sizes too.)
It's tough for USB docks to stand out—most of them are simply boxes that add extra ports to your laptop—but Satechi managed to make one that really breaks the mold. This dock sits neatly under your laptop and elevates it a little ways off the desk, for a more ergonomic angle. On the rear, it adds an Ethernet port, five USB ports (two USB-A, two USB-C, and a third USB-C for charging), and three monitor outputs (two HDMI and one DisplayPort). A hardware switch on the back lets you turn the dock on or off, and a small strip of rubber on the top makes sure your laptop doesn't slide around on top.
Most interestingly, it also has an NVMe SSD slot in the bottom. While no SSD is included, you can plug in your own to give your dock its own storage to offload files from your laptop. The dock uses two USB-C plugs that run through a small plastic sleeve to line them up for some popular laptops like the Macbook Air, but you can pull the sleeve back to separate the plugs to fit other laptops. That said, you'll need both plugged in for the dock to work, and your two USB-C ports should probably be on the same side of the laptop, so make sure yours are before picking this one up.
With all these features, it would be a strong contender for one of our favorite docks already, but its low price really brings it over the finish line. The only downside is that it doesn't come with its own power supply like most of our other picks. However, the USB-C PD port on the rear supports up to 75-watt input, which it can pass onto your laptop. Many laptops come with their own USB-C charging cable anyway, and if you don't already have your own, you can check out our guide to find one here.
Connects via two USB-C ports
Sometimes, all you need is a quick and easy way to plug your laptop into a couple of monitors—preferably without spending hundreds of dollars for the privilege. This dock from Plugable is perfect for that goal. It supports two external monitors, up to 4K, with a choice between HDMI or DisplayPort for either one. This technically means it has four ports for monitors, but it can only use two at a time. Additionally, it has six USB 3.0 connectors (USB-A style) with four on the front and two on the rear, plus an Ethernet port on the back. It's one of the least expensive docking stations we've tested.
This dock from Plugable is a pretty substantial step up from our previous multi-monitor pick. It has three HDMI ports that can all be used simultaneously, plus four USB-A 3.0 ports and an Ethernet port on the rear. On the front, it has a headphone and microphone jack, a SD card reader, and a USB-C port that delivers up to 20 watts of power, more than enough to keep your phone charged throughout the day.
This dock is pricier than the multi-monitor dock above, so it's not the first one I'd recommend. However, it has a much higher 100-watt output via its USB 4.0 charging port, which is one of its three USB-C ports. That means it can charge high-power laptops under load. It also has two DisplayPorts and one HDMI port (as opposed to the three HDMI ports on the Plugable dock above). Anker's 568 dock has more power across the board, but it comes at a premium, so unless you're sure you need the extra beef, it's probably safer to go with something cheaper. But this dock is well-suited to a modern, high-power system and performs really well there.
If you do any heavy video editing, game design, or other types of work that involve huge amounts of data, this dock has all the bells and whistles for you. On the front, it has a UHS-II SD card slot and micro SD card slot. On the rear, it has two HDMI 2.1 ports and two DisplayPort ports, supporting up to four separate 4K/60 Hz monitors simultaneously. An Ethernet port on the rear can connect your workstation to a local network with up to 2.5 Gbps speeds and, surprisingly, that might actually be a bottleneck for your setup. Three USB-A ports (two on the rear, one on the front) support the newer USB 3.2 spec, capable of up to 10 Gbps speeds. All the other devices in the chain will need to also support USB 3.2 to take advantage of those speeds, but if your goal is to put together a ludicrously high-speed workstation, few docks we've tested will help you more than this one.
This indulgent dock from Satechi comes with three Thunderbolt 4 connectors (as well as a fourth for plugging into your laptop), which means you can get some of the fastest data transfer speeds available today, provided your laptop or PC supports the Thunderbolt 4 standard too. You also get three USB-A 3.0 ports, gigabit Ethernet, a combo headphone/mic jack, and an SD card reader. It also comes with its own power supply, to help keep all the gadgets running when you plug them in. It's among the priciest docks I tested, but if you do a lot of heavy-duty tasks like transferring 4K video footage or hooking your laptop up to multiple 4K monitors, this is the dock that's going to serve your needs.
Most of the highest-end docks we test come with bulky, external power blocks they need in order to work. That's fine if your dock stays on your desk, but it's a pain if you ever want to bring your dock with you. This dock from OWC, however, has its power block built-in. It comes with a typical figure 8-style power cord, the same kind you might have laying around from a dozen different game consoles, speaker systems, and other larger electronics. The dock features an SD card slot, an HDMI port that supports up to an 8K display, an ethernet port, and three USB-A ports (one USB 2.0 on the front, two USB 3.0 on the back). An USB-C port on the front supports USB 3.2 for up to 10 Gbps transfer speeds, and two more USB-C ports on the rear can connect more devices, including another external display. Taken together, it's the kind of power we normally expect from a typical desktop dock, but it's substantially more portable.
Do you have an 8K display? Or perhaps four different 4K monitors? Is your workstation so robust it can reasonably be described as a control room? If so, the Anker 778 might be the best fit for you. It supports up to 100-watt charging via a Thunderbolt 4 port, and it has one HDMI and two DisplayPort plugs that can each support up to 8K at 30 frames per second, plus another Thunderbolt 4 downstream port. With all these combined, you can add up to four 4K displays, which is nuts. That might explain the absurdly high price.
Mechanical Timer Supplier We test a lot of USB hubs and docks and, quite frankly, most of them are … fine. They're fine! We get into the nitty-gritty for specific use-cases to find the best, but that leaves a bunch of devices that are great options, even if they don't make our top picks. Here's a selection of some of our favorites, past favorites, or just alternatives to our picks above.