Hooking a laptop up to a larger display isn't as easy as it was a few years ago. Because portability is king, laptops are starting to shed extraneous ports in order to achieve the slimmest profile possible. So where does that leave you, when you want to use your laptop at home, hooked up to your external devices? Enter the popular world of laptop docks, which are overwhelming the market. UGREEN has entered the fray, with its 9-in-1 docking station, that aims to answer all your problems. 

So, with 9 different options, this should be the end-all-be-all dock, right? Well, one of the ports is used to power the device and offers 100W passthrough charging to the connected device, which is fantastic. There's also the USB-C connection you'll need to hook the laptop up to the dock in the first place. After that, you've got four ports: two DisplayPort and two HDMI out. You can output to two screens at a whopping 4K/60 at once--a pretty sweet feature. Beyond that, you've got two hefty 10Gbps USB-A and one USB-C port on the front. That means four of the advertised ports are specifically meant for display out, which is fine, but if you really want to make the 9-in-1 your main workstation, it can leave you feeling a little more wanting. If you're still using USB dongle devices for your mouse and keyboard, that leaves you with one single USB-C to hook anything up to, and it just feels lacking. What you do get, though, is all premium. 

Having the 100W charging is the star of the show here, and it pairs nicely with one of UGREEN's power bricks, making the whole charging process pretty seamless. You don't have to worry about power problems, which can be a concern with other docks that might only output at 65W. Despite having four display out connections, you can only use two at once, but it is versatile in offering a combination of both DisplayPort and HDMI, and the resolution and refresh rate you get are impressive; everything is smooth and looks superb.

The problem with this dock is that it succeeds in so many places, however, there's always something I wish it did a little better. The biggest controversy with the 9-in-1 Docking Station is that in order to use it, you're going to have to install UGREEN's display software. It's available on macOS or Windows, but regardless of what you're using, there's no way to run it out of the box; you HAVE to install their included software. This is a massive drawback--you do get some good performance from the dock, but it automatically makes it inoperable with Linux devices, including the Steam Deck. Samsung and Huawei devices with Dex or EMUI desktop need to install an app as well, but it was unreliable in whether or not the Android device wanted to see the dock as a dock, or just a charger.

Of course, that's not even considering that you have to run a program to use it in the first place, which many might be sketched out by--especially because if you're on a Mac, it unnervingly requests access to record the laptop's screen and audio output. That's a requirement for the dock to function with the technology it uses, but it feels uncomfortable regardless. It should be noted that this isn't UGREEN's own software; it comes from Synaptics, but it still requires you to put your data in the hands of a third party. 

If you push the UGREEN Docking Station to its limits, by plugging in something to every port, and outputting to two monitors at 4K/60, it remains cool and quiet, which is nice; a lot of other docking stations might get hot to the touch, but the UGREEN one has solid airflow. The build quality overall is just really nice, and it feels satisfying in the hand, and looks incredibly sleek on a desk. 

I want to love the UGREEN 9-in-1 Docking Station, but the driver software requirement sours a lot of the experience. It's a good device, to be certain, but in a highly-congested market such as laptop docks, it'd be easy to find something that can have similar performance. Of course, it might come in more expensive than UGREEN's $199 offering, or possibly lack the quality build, but it might be worth it to you to avoid the software requirement, or have it usable on Linux devices.