Hey folks! I'm putting together a home office setup similar to what I have at the office, which involves connecting two monitors, a keyboard, and a mouse to a docking station through one cable. At work, I use the Dell WD19S docking station with my work laptop via USB-C, and it works great.
However, for my home office setup, I also want to use my personal laptop, a 2016 HP Envy 13, which doesn't have a USB-C port. It only has USB 3.0 ports, an HDMI port, and a power supply port.
I'm searching for a solution that allows me to easily connect my personal laptop to the monitors and peripherals while still maintaining the convenience of connecting my work laptop with just the USB-C cable. I'm aiming for a setup with either 1080p or 2k resolution; I won't be using it for gaming or heavy video editing, just coding and web browsing. I've done some searching online, but I haven't found anyone who faces exactly this situation. Thanks in advance for your help, and enjoy your weekend!
2 Answers
Have you considered a KVM switch? There are some out there that can manage connections for multiple devices, including setups where a laptop connects via USB-C and a desktop via USB 3.0. I found one that might be worth looking at, but it’s a bit pricey and doesn’t deliver enough power for the Dell to charge, so you’d still need to plug that in separately.
Seems like you might run into issues with charging your HP laptop over USB. If it can’t charge that way, you'll likely need two cables, one for power and another for data. Just a heads-up!
That's true, I'm okay with having a two-cable setup if it means I can connect my devices easily!
Thanks for the suggestion! Just to clarify, I'm only looking to connect one laptop at a time, not both simultaneously. But I appreciate the tip!