Dell WD19TB Thunderbolt Docking Station with 180W AC Power Adapter (130W Power Delivery)

While the product pricing is quite allot more than I wanted to spend but others I have tried were unstable.

I purchased this docking station to run two 4K displays and a handful of peripherals from a Dell Latitude 7490 laptop with Thunderbolt 3. As an experiment I plugged in a 2019 15 MacBook Pro to see if it would also work. Initially I had an issue where both 4K displays were mirroring the same activity instead of working independently. The system preferences provided no solution (neither Detect Displays worked nor the Mirror Displays checkbox—it was unchecked). I reviewed my connections. I was using the two display port connectors on the dock to run the two 4K displays. After some Googling I learned this configuration will not work as both display port connectors are on the same bus. To run both 4K displays each must be on its own bus. I had an extra Thunderbolt 3 to HDMI cable on hand. After removing one of the display port cables then using the Thunderbolt 3 to HDMI cable, which is on a separate bus, the issue was resolved! Now I can simply plug the main Thunderbolt 3 cable that comes out of the dock into either the MacBook Pro or the Dell Latitude 7490 and all the peripherals connected to the dock work with either laptop. This is fantastic!

As a few others have mentioned, I received a WD19TBS (no audio port), not a WD19TB, as the product page says when I placed my order via Amazon Warehouse. It works fine otherwise, though.

Works well. No issues.

can we all just take a moment to appreciate that this docking station presumably used to replace a full PC workstation in a business environment has the single worst functionality ever? 3 USB plugs. 2 of which are so close together only 2 of my 18 (yes, you read that correctly, 18) device USB plugs will both fit in those two stacked USB ports at the same time. But it gets even better! After plugging in two USB devices, then removing one of them, the USB plugs plastic bit came off with the USB device plug, so now my brick of horrid only has two functioning USB ports. /golfclap I bought a dell laptop once, a long long time ago, for personal use. I have never purchased a dell laptop for myself since. Im pleased to see that my brand avoidance was well considered if two decades on Im still running into a complete and total disconnect of design and use from dell. then we have some plugs on the back, and some plugs on the front... so this small profile brick manages to require more space than my previous lenovo full sized laptop docking station. the mind boggles at the engineering gymnastics required for such an end result to make it into production. Lets call this what it is. Its a power transformer. full stop. this is not under any definition a laptop docking station. convince me otherwise, i dare ya.

No significant issues. Just follow the directions when first using. Laptop needs to have the drivers downloaded before the docking station will function.

Needed a dock that would meet the power delivery requirement of 130W for a Dell Precision 5540. This one meets the requirement so no more power adapter warning or performance bottleneck. It came with a 180W power brick with both US and UK power cord ends. I am driving a 4K screen using just the supplied usb-c cable it comes with. Setup took some work as it required a laptop (not dock) BIOS update before the docks usb and ethernet port would work. I also had to install the latest nvidia drivers. Initially the 4K display would only show up as a blank black screen, but when I toggled it once to 1080p then back to 2160 the display worked fine. The 130W power delivery is only for Dell systems. Non-dell systems will receive less power. Two of the USB-C input ports supply power to devices, while the TB USB-C port did not offer power over a usb-c phone cable. I do wish it had another type-A USB3 port on the front in addition to the existing type-A and type-C ports. The use of a usb-C to type-A adapter helped though. Update 3/16: The warranty was 3 years, but the device was registered to another country in Korea so I could not easily use the warranty when the dock stopped supplying power to recharge the laptop.

I ordered the WD19TB that has the audio connector. What I received was the WD19TBS which is the updated version where they removed the audio connector. As far as I could find to read on the differences, the absence of the audio connector is the only difference. So now I was thinking I would have audio connected with my dock, which is very important to me, and do not because the item I got is not what is described. The item even looks different, of course.

The 130W output was needed to power my Dell XPS 7590 (15). That power requirement limited my docking station choices. I found this station works very well (maybe better) with less-power-hungry devices such as the Dell XPS 7390, a 2019 MacBook Pro, HP Envy x360s, HP Spectre x360s, LG Gram 17s, and an older Lenovo Flex 5. These devices range in power requirements from 60 watts to 80 or 90 watts. Its good to have one dock that can power them all. Generally speaking, reliable. Re-connecting a running machine works about 80% of the time. The other 20%, the ethernet doesnt work. That issue is fixed by rebooting the laptop with the docking station connected. Notes about the video outputs: The HDMI output can only be used stand-alone. The preferred video outputs appear to be the two DisplayPorts. If you do not have DisplayPort monitors, you can get DisplayPort to HDMI converting dongles for $5-$10. My two external monitors have different resolution: one 4K; the other, FHD (i.e.1080P). I could not get both monitors to work reliably using the two DisplayPorts. After trying various cables & dongles, I found a reliable setup to be use the first DisplayPort for the 4K monitor, and use the USB-C multi-function DisplayPort on the back for the FHD monitor. I use a QSee USB-C to HDMI converter with the FHD monitor. The DisplayPort issue might be a limitation I did not heed, with either the docking station (some stations only support two FHDs or *one* 4K) or with the laptops graphics card* (*although it looks to me that laptop GPUs are not used *at all* with external monitors. I have not been able to get *any* laptop GPUs to show usage unless displaying only through the laptops built-in screen.) Overall, the WD19TBs high power output makes it a versatile choice, as you are unlikely to come across a laptop requiring more than 130 watts input power. The WD19TBs connections work fine. Note I also have a Dell WD19 - the non-Thunderbolt version of this docking station. It has the same output power, and also works perfectly with all of the devices mentioned earlier. You might not need the pricier ThunderBolt version here if you are simply connecting monitors and devices. The advantage of Thunderbolt is 2x data transfer speed, which, from what Ive read, only adds value with high-end media editing using external drives.

I got this dock to replace my WD19... the TB version allows you to run triple monitors with the laptop closed... the USB3 version does not (Dual only, + laptop screen as far as I could figure). Given my triple monitor setup, my desk got pretty crowded so I ended up drilling some 2 holes into the desk, installing grommets, and routing cables. With all that, I wanted to get the dock off my desk top and under the desk. It had two mounting holes designed for the Dell mounting kit. Well, dontcha know, I cant spend $30 on a mounting kit when I can MacGyver my own for $15. Heres what I did: The mounting holes in the dock are M2.5. So you need a tiny diameter screw to mount it. 2 screws in fact. I got a 12 inch piece of aluminium bar from Home Depot and drilled 2 holes, 88mm apart for the two M2.5 screws. Then I overdrilled the holes to help recess the screws a little. On the ends of the bar, I drilled two larger holes that wood screws would fit through. I installed the bar to the dock (see pic), then screwed the whole assembly under my desk. I was pretty proud of myself, until I plugged the dock into the power adapter... It wouldnt turn on. I tried a different power adapter (180W, 130W) but no dice. Crap. I broke my dock... or did I? I took the whole assembly down and loosened the M2.5mm screws. When I plugged it back up, the fan started spinning. I remounted it loosely with wood screws, hooked up all my stuff, and it fired right up. Moral of the story: dont tighten the mounting screws too much. This things a little temperamental.