Baseus Spacemate USB-C dock review: Too clever for its own good

The Baseus Spacemate 11-in-1 Docking Station (BS-OH137) doesn’t seem like the best idea: a generic USB-C docking station capable of three 4K displays isn’t really feasible on paper. In the real world it’s a more practical solution than you might think, but I still wouldn’t advise pushing this dock to its limits.

Put simply, the Basus Spacemate offers the possibility of connecting three 4K displays at 4K resolution, but only at 30Hz apiece. That’s not especially comfortable to work with for long periods, so it’s probably better to think of this dock as a more conventional USB-C dock capable of connecting to just two 4K displays, provided that you have the right hardware. A few interesting gimmicks — a lock-screen button, light-up port icons, and a sticky-pad stand — add some wrinkles.

This is another dock that use Display Stream Compression (DSC), a technology found in HDMI 2.1-capable devices like laptops with Nvidia GeForce 3000-series discrete GPUs but also modern hardware like Intel 13th-gen Core chips and above. It’s visually lossless, which means that you won’t notice the compression algorithms taking effect. If your laptop is DSC-enabled, you’ll be able to connect three 4K displays at 30Hz, or two at 60Hz; if you don’t have DSC, you’ll be able to connect two 4K displays at 30Hz or one at 60Hz.

This review informs our list of the best USB-C hubs and dongles.

Display issues aside, this docking station has some quirks.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Mark Hachman / IDG

Mark Hachman / IDG

Physically, this is a rather nice little dock; it stands 4.5 inches high, sitting square with about 2.5 inches on a side. It has a braided USB-C cord built in, which measures about 2.5 feet along. I think it’s a little too big to tuck into your backpack, but you might feel differently. This dock does not include a power brick, so your laptop’s charger can be plugged into an input port, accepting up to 100W.

Some docks come with a stand; the Baseus dock comes with a sticky bottom that’s exposed by peeling back a layer. But I don’t even think that it’s necessary, as the dock remains stable without it. Overall, this dock feels well made, and I never noticed any problems with the aluminum chassis warming under load.

Ports include a 10Gbps USB-A and USB-C port on the front of the dock; neither supports charging. On the rear, you have the choice of using either HDMI or DisplayPort 1.4 for your first connection, then HDMI and DisplayPort, for your second and third display connections. On the rear you’ll find a 3.5mm headphone jack, Gigabit Ethernet, and a pair of USB-A ports, very faintly labeled to identify one port at 480Mbps for a legacy mouse, and the other at 10Gbps.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Mark Hachman / IDG

Mark Hachman / IDG

For some reason, Baseus thought that the dock needed a button to lock your screen. A bright icon on the top of the dock shows that the dock is plugged in. When tapped, it performs the same function as the Win+L shortcut does.

The dock also includes several LEDs on the front of the dock to indicate that you’ve plugged devices into various ports, such as a cable that’s connected to the dock’s HDMI and DisplayPort ports. Again, this seems like over-engineering, though Baseus says that the LEDs will indicate if a device is inserted incorrectly.

Amazon’s web page listing shows a small number of reviews, many dissatisfied with the product’s stability. On the first laptop I tried, I could only get the second display to connect at 1440p, rather than 4K60. But that wasn’t the case on the small cadre of other testing laptops I plugged in, though I had to set the displays to the proper resolutions. That’s expected, however. I didn’t see any dramatic graphics glitches or instability. I did see a bit of jerkiness while playing a 2D game, however.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Mark Hachman / IDG

Mark Hachman / IDG

Baseus Spacemate 11-in-1 Docking Station performance

I tend to evaluate stability over the course of about two days, using the dock for everyday office work, after-hours play, as well as the more formalized performance testing. I’ll sometimes use the dock even longer than that, just to cement my impressions. Again, I didn’t see any of the stability issues some consumers complained about. While this dock will drive three displays, however, I typically used it in a two-display configuration for comfort’s sake.

Because this dock isn’t powered (and the ports aren’t designed for charging) I didn’t bother testing that aspect of the dock’s performance. The dock transferred only 72W of power maximum to my laptop, however, which is less than what I would expect. I’m not sure the dock’s indicator lights are sucking up that much power, but that would be the likely culprit. Your laptop may complain that it’s not receiving enough power.

The dock’s performance was much slower than expected, streaming excepted; there, the Baseus dock dropped just 3 out of just over 10,000 test frames. That’s excellent. But the dock’s storage performance was just 113.2MB/s, with a score of 737; a rival USB-C hub from Dockcase transferred data at 138.9MB/s, producing a score of 903. Transferring data via copying files was also about 20MB/s slower than some of its rivals.

Baseus definitely put some thought into the design of its compact little docking station, and I appreciate that. However, the added features do unfortunately feel superfluous, and the performance is subpar. I think there are better alternatives in our list of the best USB-C hubs and dongles.