Ultrabooks and other slim laptops are great productivity partners, but many are short on ports for connecting to peripherals when at a desk, and they don't have the proprietary docking-station options that business laptops do. If your laptop's new enough to have a USB 3.0 port, Targus has an answer: The lengthily named USB 3.0 SuperSpeed Dual Video Docking Station with Power ($249.99 list) plugs in to provide access to one or two external monitors, audio, Gigabit Ethernet, and up to half a dozen USB peripherals, all thanks to the bandwidth of one USB 3.0 cable. It also takes care of recharging your laptop so there's only one AC adapter or power brick on or under your desk (the docking station's) instead of two (the station's plus your portable's). When it's time to leave or return to your office, there are just a couple of cables to detach or attach—the USB and power cables.

Based on DisplayLink's popular USB-to-video technology, the USB 3.0 Docking Station  works, although setup wasn't as simple as advertised and the provided USB and power cables are a little short. If you don't mind using two AC adapters, a version without power is available for $199.99.

Design and Performance
The Targus docking station is a black plastic box measuring 1.25 by 13 by 4.75 inches (HWD). Under its lid is a handy tray with seven letter-coded power tips or plug ends for its power cable; a decal or cheat sheet helps reduce trial and error when finding the right one to fit your laptop's AC adapter plug (type P for Toshiba, A or R for Lenovo, and so on). The power adapter can handle laptops that draw 90 watts or less.

On the device's left side are a USB 2.0 port and headphone and microphone jacks; on the right are a USB 3.0 port and Kensington lock slot. Arrayed along its rear are a second USB 3.0 port; power-in and -out sockets from the AC adapter and to your notebook, respectively; the USB connector that links to your laptop's USB 3.0 port; an HDMI video output; DVI-I video output; Gigabit Ethernet port; and three more USB 2.0 ports.

The supplied power and USB 3.0 cables are each about two feet long, so you'll need to keep the docking station near your laptop instead of at a distance on your desk. If the DVI-I and HDMI ports don't fit your monitors, Targus provides a DVI-I to VGA adapter and HDMI to DVI-D adapter (sorry, no DisplayPort).

The instruction pamphlet says that Windows XP and Vista users must install the DisplayLink driver via the included CD before connecting the docking station and peripherals, while Windows 7 users can connect the docking station first and the operating system will start installing the driver automatically. We weren't so lucky with the three Windows 7 laptops we tried, perhaps because Windows Update was set to download important updates only instead of automatically fetching all updates: When we connected the USB cable we heard several of the beeps that mean Windows has found a new device and is installing a driver, but when we clicked on the "device installed successfully" message only the station's USB 2.0 and 3.0 hubs were listed as ready to use.

We used Windows Update to find and install the DisplayLink display adapter driver—once by itself, once by a manual/expert/brute-force route (right-clicking "Targus USB 3.0 DV Dock with Power" in Device Manager's "Other devices" list), in addition to one time using the driver CD. But if you have neither a Wi-Fi connection for downloading nor an optical drive for installing the driver, we foresee installation headaches.

After setup and a reboot, the Targus station worked without a hitch. We used the supplied adapters to connect a Gateway VGA and an HP DVI monitor as our system's second and third screens; Targus says the video adapter supports up to 2,048-by-1,152 resolution, but the pair of 1,920 by 1,200 monitors worked fine (although we had to center or tile as opposed to stretch or fill our Windows wallpaper to decorate the displays).

A DisplayLink icon in the system tray lets you choose, as does Windows' Control Panel, between mirroring the laptop's LCD or extending the Windows desktop across the screens; a Fit to TV feature lets you adjust the size of the desktop on a display connected to the HDMI port. Dragging, arranging, and maximizing application windows among the displays was easy, as was joining our wired office LAN by plugging an Ethernet cable into the station and using assorted USB 2.0 and 3.0 hard and flash drives.

Connecting multiple peripherals to a laptop inevitably involves a spiderweb of cords and cables, but a docking station moves them from the laptop itself—where you need to untangle, plug, and unplug them every time you arrive at or leave your desk—to the station, which you can set up once and forget. The Targus USB 3.0 SuperSpeed Dual Video Docking Station with Power is overkill if your desk setup involves just, say, one monitor and a USB printer, which you can readily plug into even the most port-challenged ultrabook. But if you need to make a number of connections and your laptop vendor doesn't offer a docking station for your particular model, the Targus box is an appealingly simple (except for its not-so-simple setup) solution.

More USB and Ethernet hub reviews:
•   Targus USB 3.0 SuperSpeed Dual Video Docking Station with Power
•   Kensington Wireless USB Docking Station
•   Cable-Free USB Hub
•   IOGear USB 2.0 Hub & Card Reader
•   Ports in a Storm
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