I purchased a Lenovo Flex 6 (also seems to be referred to as a Flex 14) from Costco this weekend. I assumed that because it has a USB-C port it would work with my existing Thinkpad USB-C docking station (for my work computer - trying to use same dock for work and home laptop for ease of switching between the 2).
After much googling trying to find a compatible dock listed on Lenovo’s website (failed - even their Dock Finding tool doesn’t seem to list something) I landed here on an old thread where someone asked a similar question about their Flex 5.
My computers manual doesn’t say if the USB-C is data only - so not sure if that’s the issue or not.
We tried to install drivers / firmware for the dock thinking that was the problem and the dock is still not recognized.
Do you think it’s the drivers / firmware, a total lack of compatibility, or an adapter I may need to use? So far Lenovo support was no help, they wouldn’t even tell me if the dock was compatible and transferred me to sales for that question…I’m still waiting on hold. The rep’s other suggestion was to go to Best Buy…LOL!!
Thanks for posting. Sorry to hear of the frustration getting any answers on this – amazing how hard it is to find USB-C port features for some brands and models.
Usually Lenovo has this documented in a technical specifications PDF, but it was hard to find for this one because, funny enough, they have a typo of their own brand name - “Lenov” - as part of the document title:
Unfortunately according to this document it looks like the USB-C port on this system is data only (so, no USB-C Alternate Mode video output or charging support). So if your existing Thinkpad dock relies on these features which is likely, unfortunately it’s not going to work.
Gary, thank you so much for taking the time to answer me…you’ve provided information that two reps at Lenovo could not! The information you found was not something I could find at all, so I mistakenly assumed that USB-C meant it would work with my dock. Looks like this one is going back to Costco - a shame, it’s a nice little machine, but the whole point of this exercise is to be able to find a personal laptop that will work with my existing Thinkpad USB-C doc as provided by work, so I can swap between the work PC and home PC easily at my desk.
THANK YOU for saving me from more frustration and fruitless Googling.
Happy to help. We’ve ended up as one of the definitive sources for this type of info, since we’re documenting this on a system-by-system basis. (Unfortunately out of necessity because the PC industry as a whole has done such a poor job explaining the daunting complexities of USB-C and Thunderbolt 3.)
Hopefully Lenovo can suggest a number of compatible system options based on the model of your dock.