Best dock for new P52 and T480??

[ckotan]

About to buy on IBMEPP a P52 for myself and a T480 for my bride. They have a bunch of docking stations, and I don't know what dock to buy for each. I'd like to do Thunderbolt 3, of course.

[Whitieiii]

Believe the Lenovo dock for the new thinkpads are usb c instead of the dock connector as they got rid of the connector on the bottom... get the ultra dock (most expensive one) it's what I've got for my T440s and T440p and the only one to support 2 digital displays for T series or i believe 3 or 4 for digital displays for W/P series (I don't know for sure but i know it can output to more display) the others i believe still have VGA as a connector and i don't know anyone who uses that in 2018 even most companies don't use it anymore

[dr_st]

About to buy on IBMEPP a P52 for myself and a T480 for my bride. They have a bunch of docking stations, and I don't know what dock to buy for each. I'd like to do Thunderbolt 3, of course.

If you are looking to buy two docks, one for each, and want Thunderbolt 3, then you need to get this for the P52:
ThinkPad Thunderbolt 3 Workstation Dock
And this for the T480:
Thinkpad Thunderbolt Dock

[ckotan]

I finally ordered my P52, and asked the Lenovo phone sales guy which dock. He said the Workstation dock with 230W - Part 40A50230US. I'm now nervous that he misled me and I may have ordered a boat anchor. Will my P52 park on this v.expensive dock?

[dr_st]

Unfortunately, your suspicion is correct. The P52 does not support this old style of mechanical docks. See, for instance:
https://www.lenardgunda.com/thinkpad-p52-review/

The ThinkPad P52 dropped support for mechanical docks. All ThinkPads are now using Thunderbolt 3 as the docking technology.

The official dock is called ThinkPad Thunderbolt 3 Workstation Dock. It shipped several months after the P52 was available, I received mine only sometime in October. You can read my full review of the dock here. The docking stations works ok, but there are a few little quirks sometimes – that is why I also wrote a troubleshooting article for it.

Before I received the Workstation dock, I also used the ThinkPad Thunderbolt 3 Dock at my workplace. It works ok with the ThinkPad P52, with some minor issues. I also need to connect the 170W power supply to the notebook, because the single USB-C / Thunderbolt 3 cable cannot carry enough juice to power the P52.

The minor issue is, that when the display turns off (sleep or just power saving), sometimes when coming back online the external displays start to flash. I need to reconnect the dock to make it stop. Installing the latest dock drivers and dock firmware does not help.

https://www.lenardgunda.com/thinkpad-th ... ck-review/
https://www.lenardgunda.com/thinkpad-th ... eshooting/

[ckotan]

Thanks for your research! You guys sure know your stuff. Per Tech Support, I had ordered the wrong doc, so I have an RMA, and the new TB3 Workstation coming in a few days. The TP may arrive today - wow! My 1tb SSD and 32GB RAM are supposed to arrive today, too. I'll report my experience and impressions on Thinkpads. Thanks for all you do.

Today I need to learn what Laplink will do for me, to migrate from my W510 to the P52. I hope I can prevent it from transferring the _nasty_ Bit Defender, which seems to prevent some of my software - that ran fine with Norton - from executing. I hope it will transfer all of my licensed software to the new box, but leave this machine working fine a few months.