The USB-C docking station is great - it’s certainly cleared up clutter and cables on my desk and means that I can use my laptop like a desktop when I’m at the office.
However I would like an additional feature to be added and that’s the ability to switch off the power over USB-C please. I believe it’s good practice to allow a battery on a laptop to drain/discharge rather than run as plugged in and charging all the time - and when I’m connected to the dock this is not possible.
Thanks for posting, and glad to hear things are working well!
Charging behavior has become quite complex, and Power Delivery/Charging is controlled entirely by the host system’s charging controller. Some OEMs include software to give the user a bit of control over exactly the behavior you describe, temporarily disabling charging and allowing the battery to discharge to a certain percentage.
The feature you mention could technically be possible, but it would add extra complexity, cost, and potential for misunderstanding for many users. So given the various trade-offs – especially adding more complexity to the already too-complex world of USB-C behavior – we made the decision when designing our charging products to continue to leave charging control up to the host system.
Thanks for the well informed and considered reply Gary.
My previous laptop - a Lenovo - did allow me to go into a battery-life prolonging mode - which let the battery regularly discharge to I think 75% even when plugged in. The swanky new HP laptop I have doesn’t seem to have this capability - so I was hoping it would be something implementable on the docking station.
Aside from that, and the need occasionally to power cycle to get everything to work, the docking station is a great product.
Cheers, Matt.
If you continue to occasionally need to power cycle, please email support@plugable.com – we’ll have a look at some system logs and see if there are any HP updates which may help.
