P2217, dual, dock recommendation?

Question

@DELL-Chris M could you recommend the best dock? I have recently purchased two P2217's and would like to be able to connect a variety of laptops or desktops to be able to use both monitors at the same time. Is a block diagram available of how to successfully implement the setup?

jphughan · Accepted Answer

@9reen.i Happy to help! Ok, that extra info helps a lot in terms of making a recommendation. However, the short answer is that there's no single solution that would be ideal for all 3 of those systems. But I'll tell you what the considerations are then give you three options with the tradeoffs associated with each.

The fact that an XPS 15 is in the mix means that if you want to power it adequately with a dock, you've got very few options. The reason is that the XPS 15 is designed for a 130W power source, but the official USB Power Delivery spec that handles charging over USB-C maxes out at 100W. Dell did something proprietary on the XPS 15 and some of their docks to stretch the spec in order to push 130W over USB-C, but you won't find that in most places.

The additional fact that you've got a regular USB laptop involved is a problem. Unlike USB-C and Thunderbolt 3, "regular USB" has no native video output capability, which means traditional docks that rely on USB-C/TB3 will not work with them through an adapter. There is a dock that has technology that an work around that (more on that in a moment), but it also can't receive power in order to charge the system. And the fact that it's USB 2.0 rather than 3.0 means that even the video output capability would be dicey.

Ok, so here are the options:

Dell WD19 w/ 180W power supply. Make sure you get the 180W version, not the 130W version it can also be ordered with, since that can only pass 90W to the attached system, whereas the 180W version can pass up to 130W through. Dell created that version specifically to support systems like the XPS 15 properly. This dock when paired with those systems would support dual displays up to 1920x1200 each. But you wouldn't be able to use it with your regular USB system.
Dell WD19TB. This version comes standard with a 180W power supply and supports Thunderbolt 3 rather than regular USB-C. That means that it can tap into 4x as much display bandwidth as the regular WD19, so you can run dual displays up to 4K 60 Hz each or triple displays up to QHD (2560x1440) each. It also has a Thunderbolt peripheral port, which if you have a Thunderbolt peripheral and a system with only a single TB3 port is important, since otherwise there would be no way to connect both the dock and the peripheral at the same time. Here again, you wouldn't be able to use it with your regular USB system.
Dell D6000. This dock could be used with both systems, in fact it has a USB-C to USB-A "regular USB" adapter right on its cable that can be attached when needed. In theory it supports up to dual 4K 60 Hz from a regular USB system and up to triple 4K 60 Hz displays from a native USB-C system. However, the "in theory" part is that I wouldn't attempt anything close to the former when using it with a USB 2.0 system rather than USB 3.0. But way it can do this even over regular USB is by relying on DisplayLink "indirect display" technology, but that technology comes with some drawbacks. I wrote those up in detail in the post marked as the answer in this thread. In addition, the D6000 can only provide 60W even when connected via USB-C (no power when connected via USB-A), which means that if you want your XPS 15 to perform properly when plugged into this dock, you'll need to keep its normal power supply connected as well. I'm not sure what amount of power your other laptop is designed to have available. I really don't recommend this option given that you'd be incurring the drawbacks of DisplayLink and low power to the XPS 15, all to support what has to be quite an old system at this point if it only supports USB 2.0, particularly because USB 2.0 means that even THAT system might not perform all that well with DisplayLink. Seems like too big a sacrifice to make for too old a system.

Hopefully this helps, and of course feel free to follow up with any questions!

jphughan · Answer

@9reen.i First of all there aren't docking stations that you can really attach to desktops. Even if you had a desktop system that had a USB-C port that supported carrying both video and USB 3.x (many desktops have data-only USB-C ports if they have any at all), you'd have the problem that the docking station cable isn't likely to be long enough unless maybe your desktop is sitting on your desk rather than the floor. And running an extension cable is unlikely to work properly.

If you want to share displays between a desktop and a laptop, you'd want a KVM box. You'd connect your desktop connections directly to one source input on the KVM and then connect the outputs of a laptop docking station to the other, then connect whatever laptop you wanted to use at any given time to the docking station. A friend of mine uses this setup for your use case and loves it. But KVMs that support dual display outputs are somewhat expensive. The fact that you're using fairly low resolution displays might help, but the one my friend uses supports up to dual 4K displays and I think it cost $350.

In terms of docking station recommendations, it would help to specify what laptop(s) you plan to use. The main docks you'd likely be considering from Dell would be the WD19 and WD19TB. The former uses regular USB-C, whereas the latter supports Thunderbolt 3 and when used with Thunderbolt 3 systems, that allows it to support higher end display setups -- in case you think you might ever want to upgrade to displays with more resolution. But when the WD19TB is used with a non-Thunderbolt system, it behaves like a regular WD19, which is enough to run your dual 1680x1050 displays.

The other factor is power. The WD19 is available with two different power supplies, a 130W and a 180W. The former can supply up to 90W to laptops, and the latter can supply up to 130W to certain Dell laptops and 90W to everything else. The latter exists to support systems like the XPS 15 that are designed for a 130W power source and can accept that over USB-C. Dell did something proprietary on some of its docks and systems to run 130W over USB-C, since the official USB PD spec maxes out at 100W. But if one of the laptops you might want to use is an XPS 15 or Precision 5500 Series model, you'd want to get the right power source.

9reen.i · Answer

@jphughan thank you for taking the time to write a great explanation. I am a complete noob and in the slow lane when it comes to things like this but love learning so appreciate you sharing your expertise.

So I have a personal laptop which is an XPS 15 9550 which I have been running for about 4 years and I have a work laptop which is a HP ZBook 14u G6. Both the Dell and HP have x1 thunderbolt/usb type c and x1 hdmi. I think the dock you have mentioned should do the trick for both. I assume with the dock you mentioned I would connect one cable from dock(1) to monitor(1) and a separate cable from dock(1) to monitor(2) with the dock(1) being connected to laptop(1) via usb type c.

I also have an old Sony Vaio vgn fz38m which still seems to be chugging along and the best connection that has is a usb 2.0. Do you think a dock would connect to this via an adaptor? I appreciate that certain versions of usb will only allow certain functionality but all I would want it to do is to display on the two screens to be honest and nothing more.

Appreciate your support.

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P2217, dual, dock recommendation?

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