In the advent of COVID, and creating a more complete working from home yet portable workspace, I have spent some time creating a home office in our house. The new monitor(s), desk and all the extra accessories has created a dilemma though. How should I go about hooking everything together yet make it easy to take the laptop on the go? Well time it’s time for a home docking station. With so many out there, and with my love for the ANKER product line, I of course went straight to their website to look for a dock that made sense for my home office.

Enter the PowerExpand Elite 13-in-1 Thunderbolt 3 Dock, a small yet powerful dock for all my monitors, USB drives, ethernet connection, phone charging among other things you might need while working from home or in the office. The PowerExpand Elite has as you would expect by the name, 13 available options of input and output. You have an array of slots on both the front and the rear of the PowerExpand Elite to accomplish this.

This unit is very nicely constructed and the ports feel solid as well. Everything works as intended. It works with Windows laptops or non-M1 MacBooks equipped with a Thunderbolt 3 or 4 port. Not compatible with M1 MacBooks or Linux or Chrome OS laptops. The dock supports up to 85W of charging via the Thunderbolt upstream port on the back of the dock (indicated by a laptop symbol). The USB-C Power Delivery port (indicated by “PD”) and the Thunderbolt downstream port (indicated by a thunderbolt symbol) support 18W and 15W fast charging for your phone or tablet. The USB-A 3.0 port on the front supports 7.5W to charge smaller devices like smartwatches or headphones. The three USB-A data ports on the back of the dock do not support charging.

Pros:
• It has many ports to connect things to it
• SD Card reader is fast
• Does not get too hot
• Charges Laptop (HP 14″) nicely

Cons:
• Does support 2 screens, but not through 2 HDMI ports. There is only 1 HDMI port.
• Can only use one HDMI port and the Thunder Bolt 4 on the back
• Had to use the back TB4 port to connect the monitor
• Laptop connection on the front of the device (I prefer these to go through the back)

The Anker PowerExpand Elite 13-in-1 is a phenomenal Thunderbolt 3 dock. It’s compact design and large expansion list make it a desirable option for any home office. The other setback for some might be the cost of $299, but this amount of peripheral diversity can’t be cheap.

You can purchase the PowerExpand Elite on Anker’s website.

Price: $299.99
Where to buy: ANKER

Disclosure: I received the PowerExpand Elite 13-in-1 Thunderbolt 2 Dock in exchange for my honest review. The opinions expressed in my review are my own. No other compensation was given