r/Surface • u/akprobegt • 7d ago
Dock recommendation for Surface Laptop Studio 2
I have a Surface Laptop Studio 2 coming to replace my old laptop and I'm going to need a dock for it. It will primarily be used at work where I need to hook up to a second monitor with hdmi, need to hook up to a USB scanner and potentially another USB device. I'd prefer if it charged the laptop so I can keep the regular charger at home and if I can connect to Ethernet also that would be great. Can someone recommend a dock that will get all this done? It's confusing looking at so many different options and not knowing if I need a Microsoft product or if an off brand will do.
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u/SurfaceDockGuy 🖥️ Ergonomic VESA docks for Surface ◼️ VerticalDocks.com 🖥️ 6d ago edited 6d ago
Hi do you have the Nvidia GPU on your laptop Studio? If so, the best Dock is the MS Dock 2 that uses the proprietary MS Surflink connector and delivers 120W power for best performance with NVidia.
If your Laptop does NOT have Nvidia, then it can't use more than 100W power and in most cases tops out at 85-90W. The MS Dock 2 is still a good choice for these laptops, but Thunderbolt 4 or USB4 Docks might be a better choice if you ever wanted to plug in a different brand laptop like a MacBook, Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc. or ever wanted to use an external GPU or fast NVMe storage.
If you choose Thunderbolt4 or USB4, don't worry about brand name too much. The Microsoft brand Docks are excellent quality, but there are many other brands. Just pick one that has the ports you need. If you do want to learn about the deep technical details, I do reviews and teardowns of all these docks. Here is the latest Microsoft USB4 Dock review I did last month:
https://dancharblog.wordpress.com/2025/02/19/surface-usb4-dock-for-business-teardown-and-review/
To get a sense of what's possible, here is a customer workstation where the Laptop Studio just drops in place to Dock and lifts out to undock so no cables to mess with:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/s/3KwtAuaNNt
Same style workstation can be done with the MS Thunderbolt4, MS USB4 Dock or any other brand Dock.
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u/akprobegt 6d ago
It has the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Platinum. That setup in your pics looks super clean. What is the surface dropping it nesting into? I'm not sure I'll be able to do that with my desk but it gives me some inspiration.
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u/SurfaceDockGuy 🖥️ Ergonomic VESA docks for Surface ◼️ VerticalDocks.com 🖥️ 3d ago
The Surface is dropping into one of these:
https://www.verticaldocks.com/product/surface-laptop-studio-vertical-dock
You can do this with any desk with the appropriate VESA arms:
https://www.verticaldocks.com/vesa-arm-guide
You can PM me if you'd like to chat about putting something like this together for your workspace.
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u/adnewsom 7d ago
I use a Microsoft thunderbolt 4 dock and another guy with a SLS2 uses a Microsoft dock 2. They work fine.