Question about Venue 11 Pro Dock

Thanks Brian for the response.

I have just ordered the DV11P dock rather than take the chance.

How about the reverse?  Will the ST2 charge ok in the DV11P dock with the higher voltage?

Again, thanks for getting back to me!

Mike

Here's some clarification. The 30W adapter used on the Latitude ST2 docking station is not "lower voltage." Both the ST2 and Venue 11 Pro share the 19/19.5 volt charging voltage standard (which is commonly used across 95% of Dell's laptop power supplies.)

However - the adapter used on the ST2 dock is lower amperage - rated at 19.5V @ 1.58A (19.5V x 1.58A = Roughly 30W) compared to the Venue 11 Pro Dock Charger which is a 19.5V @ 2.3A = Roughly 45W

In electronics - amperage is used to measure/define the amount of energy transferred at a given voltage. While mismatched voltages can easily (and quickly) damage electronics, amperage works in an entirely different way.

Amps are drawn from the power supply. You could connect a power supply with the correct voltage and a million amps (hypothetically) - and not damage the electronics. If the 5V device only wants 2 amps, it'll draw it's two amps from the million available and be happy. If you connect another 5V to that same million-amp power supply - but it wants 10 amps - it too would only draw what it needs.

In this particular case, both the ST2 and Venue Pro 11 docks have the same rated voltages on the power supplies - but the ST2 30W adapter is only rated for 1.58A while the 45W adapter bundled with the Venue 11 Dock is rated for 2.3A. 

How this impacts charging on the device is largely dependent on how you plan on using the docking station. The extra amperage goes towards the circuitry in the docking station itself - like powering the 4 USB 3.0 ports (900mA each, 3.6 watts under load). [Note: The ST2 has USB 2.0 ports at 500mA each, making it 2 watts under full load]

However, when you consider that the power adapter bundled with the Venue 11 Pro is only 24W (19.5V @ 1.2A) - a 30W adapter should be more than enough to charge the tablet provided you're not slinging tons of stuff off the dock's USB ports. Though it doesn't leave a large amount of headroom for the docking station's needs.

At this time, it is my belief that the 45W adapter included with the Venue 11 Pro dock is actually overkill - and was not chosen because the combined tablet+dock requires a full 45watts. Choosing the 45W laptop adapter for that dock was a win/win, both providing adequate power for the device and dock, along side cost-savings for Dell.

Since Dell doesn't mass produce a 35W or 40W adapter - and making one custom for this dock would likely prove costly - using an adapter that's already shipping with existing Ultrabooks is much more cost effective. Why else would Dell choose a 45W power supply that's rated for nearly twice the current of the 24W charger they ship with the tablet. I doubt Dell would ship an inadequate power adapter with the tablet, nor would the dock require anything more than 5-6 watts to operate. Though there does exist the potential that Dell's provided 24W charger does not charge the Venue 11 Pro as fast as the tablet otherwise could - but that the limitation of the USB-Micro interface led them to use a lower wattage wall wart. But that's just idle speculation. :)

Fun Fact: When a Dell laptop, rated for a certain wattage, is plugged into an adapter of insufficient wattage - it will throttle the performance of the system, commonly causing it to stutter and hiccup due to limiting CPU clock speeds and the like. Brian's response seems to also indicate you might notice it discharging faster than it's charging if you're under heavy load. 

I have an ST2 Docking station (and ST2 charger) on order - and I'll let you know how it goes. I found a 3ft male-to-female 7.4mm adapter in my Dell power supply stash (the standard Dell uses on most laptop chargers) - and if I see issues with the 30W ceiling, I'll splice the 40-pin cable to this adapter. Then I could run the dock off of any standard dell power supply - since they all use the same 19.5V standard, more or less. A 45/60W power adapter runs you like $15 bucks online - and would leave plenty of headroom for the device to charge. While this is probably not recommended by dell themselves, running a couple more watts through the circuit shouldn't cause anything bad.

With all of that said - there's no way for me to be certain at this present time what does and does not work on the older ST2 docking station with the Venue 11 Pro. For all I know - the firmware of the unit won't register the expansion ports and it'll be a glorified charging dock (which is totally fine by me). A gentleman on Amazon responded to a question posed on a Venue 11 Pro listing asking if the docking stations were compatible - and he said he tested it on a buddy's ST2 dock and it worked just fine.

So to answer your question - with a reasonably high certainty - yes, you can charge an ST2 on the new Dell Venue Pro 11 docking station -- and with some caveats -- yes, you could charge the V11P off the ST2 docking station (potentially at a decreased rate).

I'll keep you posted - my haul gets delivered this Thursday.

FYI - the ST2 dock will charge the Venue 11 Pro just fine - mine works like a charm. Additionally - the ST2 charger (with the 40-pin dock connector) works great charging the Venue 11 Pro directly as well.

I don't think I'll bother with the USB charger - since the ST2 charger doesn't mess around with a low power (5V)/ high power (19V) mode - it just charges at the full rate 100% of the time. You can find them for $15-20 bucks on Amazon and Ebay.

That said - none of the ports really work except audio. USB doesn't power on, and HDMI BAAAARELY worked on 1 out of 3 displays I tried. If you buy one (or have one) it'll basically be a charging station. 

Do note that the tablet does identify the dock - and can see displays connected to the docking station, but it cannot successfully sustain a connection on most monitors I've tried. Furthermore - it will disable the on screen keyboard while docked.

I too have ordered a Venue 11 Pro docking station, since you can get a refurb for about $10 more than the combined cost of the ST2 dock and it's power supply. 

Where are the refurbs?

Got mine from an authorized reseller on eBay.