Unitek’s docking station is one of the best ones I’ve tried and tested. It is really very well designed, and the addition of USB hub makes it a very versatile and useful external accessory for your PC. In my experience docking stations are one of those accessories that are not frequently used (unless you are an IT professional or something along that vein).

The first thing you notice about this docking station is its design. It is very elegant and streamlined, and a far cry from the usual drab industrial look of most docking stations. The plastic raised guards on the side of the docking port also make your external drive feel less exposed and vulnerable while it is docked. This docking station something that you would not mind keeping on your work desk permanently.

The three USB ports work and function like all other USB hubs that I’ve come across. They are an easy way of adding external USB functionality to your computer. The transfer speeds were on par with all other USB 3.0 hubs that I had tested. I would have prefered that they were a slightly more elevated from the bottom, or even better slanted under an upward angle for an easier access.

This docking station is meant to be used with the USB 3 cables and docks, but it’s also backward compatible with the USB 2 standard. The docking station comes with an external power supply, so it should in principle work with any standard USB port. I’ve tested it with two different Western Digital HDDs – one was 1 TB and the other was 500 GB. I was able to use it with both Mac and PC computers. I did not try to benchmark the file transfer rates, but they seem to be in comparable to the other USB 3 external storage systems that I’ve used.

The docking station seems well made and durable. It was physically extremely easy to insert and take out the HDDs.

I would strongly recommend this docking station/USB 3 combo to any IT professionals or presumes, as well as to anyone who needs to archive and access large amount of files on an ongoing basis.