Max res on UD-160-A USB 2.0 Universal Docking Station?

Discontinued Products UD-160-A
1

I’m sure this falls in the category of “we meant what we said”, but I have to ask anyway.

I have a ThinkPad X300 (now running Win7) which is a beautiful machine except it doesn’t have a docking station. What Lenovo offered was a port replicator (#43R8770) with VGA output at max 1400x1050 or 1280x1024.

I can live with the VGA (it’s all the X300 has anyway) but my monitor is a Dell U2405 at 1920x1200. I notice the UD-160 says 1920x1080 so what would happen if I hook it up to the U2405? Would I get letterboxing, or would it stretch the image, or does it secretly support 1920x1200? Of course I’m hoping for the latter but don’t have much hope. :frowning:

Thanks!
=aw

2

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for asking ahead, I’ll be happy to help. The UD-160-A supports up to a maximum 1920 X 1080. So, no secret support for 1920 X 1200, what will happen is that the UD-160-A and the monitor will negotiate to the highest commonly supported mode, almost certainly 1920 x 1080.

We do have a docking station that will support the higher resolution of your monitor. It supports resolutions up to 2048×1152, here’s a link to more information:

http://plugable.com/products/UD-3000

I hope this helps. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do to help.

Thanks,
Jerome.

3

Thanks Jerome, I appreciate the quick reply. I saw the newer model but the X300 doesn’t have USB 3.0

I’ve seen some other USB 2.0 devices that do seem to support 1920x1200. Now I wouldn’t ask you to criticize another brand (and I’m sure you wouldn’t) so let me ask at a technical level if there’s a specific quantifiable reason why USB 2.0 shouldn’t be asked to pump out 1920x1200 in this configuration (e.g. “1920*1080=2073600 and 1920*1200=2304000 and the actual USB 2.0 throughput is x which falls between those two” or something like that)?

IOW, was there a specific reason Plugable went with 1080 that would make me think twice about trying to achieve 1200?

Thanks again!
=aw

4

Hi Andrew,

With higher resolutions, as you know there will be more graphics data sent across the wire so bandwidth could become an issue. However, unless you are doing very heavy graphics, audio, and network it may work just fine. As you calculated… it will put more demands on the USB 2.0 bandwidth. For web browsing and office applications you’ll probably be happy.

Streaming video would probably disappoint, though.

I hope this helps!
Thanks,
Jerome.