Along with a refresh of the ThinkPad lineup, Lenovo is also offering several new accessories to compliment the new laptops. There are two new docks, and two new displays, each offering at a minimum USB-C connectivity to simplify connections.
It’s great to see more Thunderbolt 3 docking solutions on the market. Thunderbolt 3 offers up to 40 Gbps full duplex, which gives a lot more options for IO than ever before. It can natively support two DisplayPort 1.2 streams, for up to two UHD displays at 60 Hz each, and because it’s done over USB-C, it can leverage the 100 Watts of power delivery from that port.
Since the ThinkPad Thunderbolt 3 dock is meant for business uers, some of the port selections may seem odd, but are still required by many organizations. The Thunderbolt 3 dock offers two DisplayPort ports, HDMI, VGA, five USB 3.0 ports with one of these always powered, Gigabit Ethernet, headset jack, and a Thunderbolt 3 port over USB-C, meaning you won’t lose your USB-C port when docking with this.
The dock ships with a 135-Watt AC Adapter, which provides up to 65W of power to the laptop, and the remainder for powering the accessories. There is also a power button on the dock to control the ThinkPad power state when docked, which is nice since the laptop could easily be closed when docked.
As far as display outputs, this dock will drive up to three UHD displays, but in that scenario only one will be at 60 Hz, since both of the DisplayPort outputs are from a single DP 1.
