Ugreen Max 313 Thunderbolt 4 dock review: Stable but slow

Best Prices Today: Ugreen Revodok Max 13-in-1 Thunderbolt 4 Docking Station (U709)

Ugreen’s latest Revodok Max 13-in-1 Thunderbolt 4 Docking Station (U709) is another reliable Ugreen Thunderbolt 4 dock. But this premium offering is marred by a high price tag, slow performance, and a broken promise about a capability that it doesn’t deliver.

Ugreen’s Revodok Max 13-in-1 Thunderbolt 4 Docking Station (U709), also known as the Revodok Max 313, includes a wide, diverse port selection including ostensible support for three displays, one each via an HDMI, DisplayPort, and upstream Thunderbolt 4 port.

On the front of the Ugreen’s Revodok Max 13-in-1 Thunderbolt 4 Docking Station (U709) is both a TF 4.0 (MicroSD) as well as an SD 4.0 card slot, plus a 3.5mm headphone jack. A 10Gbps USB-A port sits alongside two USB-C ports; both deliver 10Gbps of data, but the left one supplies 18W of power for smartphone charging. A lock port is nestled into the dock’s side. On the rear is a gigabit Ethernet jack and power port, two 5Gbps USB-A ports for a mouse and keyboard, and the aforementioned display ports: specifically, one DisplayPort 2.1 port, one HDMI 2.1 port, plus upstream and downstream Thunderbolt 4 ports. Only 60 watts of power are passed to the laptop, however.

Ugreen’s docks typically provide little to no documentation, and this is no different. The dock is essentially plug and play, however, and all of the ports are marked thoroughly, which I appreciate. I’m not as fond of the power supply, which uses a “wall wart” form factor that puts the transformer right on top of the plug.

The Revodok Max 313 13-in-1 docking station is yet another entrant in Ugreen’s stable, reliable line of docking stations. But this is a triple-display dock that only outputs to two displays, with performance that underwhelms. For its price, you’d expect more.

I’ve reviewed a number of Ugreen Revodok docks over the years, including the very similar Revodok Pro 13-in-1. Ugreen uses a good, better, best strategy: The Pro line tends to focus on more USB-C functionality and a low ($100-ish) price. The Ultra lineup seems to favor additional connectivity, helped out by DisplayLink. This dock is a member of the Revodok Max lineup, Ugreen’s premium tier, which emphasizes Thunderbolt and a high price tag above all.

Honestly, Ugreen’s docks tend to blur together. Haven’t I already reviewed a Revodok Max 13-in-1, I thought to myself. Last year, I did: Except that was the Revodok Max 213, a solidly built 13-in-1 Thunderbolt 4 dock, also priced at $399. Of the two, I prefer the one I’m reviewing here — the Max 313 –as the Max 213 uses a pair of USB-C (Thunderbolt) display port outputs, meaning you’ll probably have to spend a bit more for adapter cables. That dock pushes 90W of power to your laptop, however.

(It’s absolutely worth pointing out that “Max 313” branding didn’t show up until I went hunting for the product page to check the specifications. Ugreen’s branding is as bad as its products are good.)

Ugreen claims that this dock includes new cooling solutions: a silica gel layer, the aluminum shell, and cooling pad “feet” that raise the dock up slightly. The 7.25 x 3.25 x 1-inch. dock can’t be placed vertically to save space, but Ugreen’s cooling solution works just fine. The dock did get warm under load, but not worryingly so.

How does the Revodok Max 13-in-1 dock (U709) perform?

I usually try to live with a dock I’m testing for a few days; in reality, it usually lasts a week or more as I get sidetracked with other assignments. I’ve lived with the Ugreen Revodok Max 313 for at least that long, and it’s been terrific. Mostly.

Ugreen says that this dock is capable of using all three display ports to connect to three 4K displays at 60Hz. A 10th-gen Intel Core chip supports just three displays, meaning that your laptop display won’t be used. Anything more recent than that should be able to take full advantage of this dock’s capabilities. But I tried connecting the dock’s three ports to three separate displays, using five separate laptops, and the dock simply wouldn’t connect to the third.

From my power tests, I found that the front charging port put out a comfortable 15W max, very close to the rated 18W and enough to fast-charge a smartphone. The USB-A ports delivered a normal 2.5W.

The dock passed a high of 55W (out of the rated 60W) to the laptop. That’s perfectly fine for a majority of productivity laptops, which have been trending downward in power use. Many already use a 45W or 60W charger anyway. For a laptop with a discrete GPU, however, it won’t be enough. Even something with a “creator-class” GPU in it, such a Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio, may pop up a warning about using a “slow” or underpowered charger.

The performance of this dock varied rather significantly, which is something I normally don’t see. While streaming a 4K60 test stream over the internet, my test laptop connected to the dock dropped 81 frames, while the best docks drop about 15 frames at most. I didn’t notice any stuttering, but the dropped frames are a bit higher than I’d like.

I use PCMark’s storage benchmark and a test SSD to determine how quickly a laptop connected to the dock can transfer data, part of how I test Thunderbolt docks. Again, the dock’s performance varied more than I would have expected. The average transfer speeds was 110MB/s, but the low was 103MB/s. The highest-performing docks touch about 140MB/s. By comparison, the Ugreen Revodok Pro 13-in-1 Triple Display Docking Station recorded 144.67MB/s in my storage tests, while the $399.99 Revodok Max 213 recorded 129.45MB/s. 

While copying a folder’s worth of data, the Max 313 completed the task in 1 minute, 4 seconds. Normally, there’s not much difference between the time to copy the folder when performed on its own, or while streaming video in the background. (I plug the Ethernet jack in so any incoming data comes in through the dock.) But the Max 313 performed this second task in 1:38, which is a fairly wide gap.

Should you buy the Revodok Max 13-in-1 Thunderbolt 4 dock (U709)?

This is a $399 docking station, an ultra-premium model whose customers should expect that it just work. For a large part, it does: The dock is super stable, with a conveniently wide range of ports. As someone who typically uses two displays, this dock absolutely appeals to me.

But would I shell out $399 for a dock that doesn’t deliver the ability to connect to three displays, as promised, with slower performance than expected? I’d feel a little short-changed if I did.

When I select a dock to appear in our list of the best Thunderbolt laptop docking stations, however, I factor in the stability, the variety of ports, the performance, and the price. I always push for dock makers to lower their prices, however, and the Ugreen Revodok Max 13-in-1 Thunderbolt 4 Docking Station (U709) is not worth the asking price.

Best Prices Today: Ugreen Revodok Max 13-in-1 Thunderbolt 4 Docking Station (U709)