Question Set up for work from home station

[cstrife32]

Hi all,

I am going to be working remotely for a month in my home state, and I want to get a good setup going with my laptop and a docking station with two 1920 x 1080 monitors. I currently have a ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 7 laptop with an i7-10701U, 16GB DDR3 RAM, 1TB SSD, and two USB-C Lightning Ports. My main concern is having poor performance while I use a dual monitor setup ,and I want to make sure that won't be an issue. I will be remoting into my PC at the office so the laptop will basically be a display bot while all the heavy data processing and GPU usage will occur at my office PC. I have made a list of docks and monitors below that I am considering.

Dock
Lenovo Thunderbolt 3 Essential Dock
Plugable USB-C 4K Triple Display Docking Station
WAVLINK USB C
StarTech.com USB C Dock
Cable Matters USB C Dock

Monitor
Acer K242HL
Acer G276HL
SAMSUNG LS27F354FHNXZA
ASUS VG245

I'm basically looking to take this combination of components and find a combo that gives me the most monitor space, good performance, and value. I'd like to spend max $650 on this, if possible. My current plan is to go with the Lenovo Thunderbolt 3 Essential, Acer G276HL, ASUS VE278Q. My justification with going with the Lenovo Docking Station is that I don't want to bet on an offbrand docking station that doesn't work properly.

Any thoughts on using offbrand docking stations? Any docking station horror stories? Anything I should look out for to make this setup work? Do you think my choices of equipment are good?

Any feedback, alternatives, or ideas are much appreciated!

Thank you,

 

[hang-the-9]

When you remote into your work PC the local setup almost does not matter. I would use a Lenovo dock if you don't have any issues with the extra cost (seeing how you have a new X1 that does not sound like you would).

Your monitors range from basic 24" models to some 27" ones and then a gaming grade panel, what size do you want? For that system I doubt you need any 1ms high refresh rate stuff. Do you care much about the picture quality and angle of view vs price? Do you want larger icons and display or more to fit on the screen? A 27" 1080 display is really getting to the too large for the resolution, 24" is better for 1080, 27" a 1440 screen is nicer to have, will have sharper text and can fit more on the screen.

This 24" Dell model is good https://www.amazon.com/Dell-Screen-LED-Lit-Monitor-P2419H/dp/B07F8XZN69/ref=sr_1_7?crid=VCEKXZRPZL9N&dchild=1&keywords=dell+24+ultrasharp&qid=1603206327&s=electronics&sprefix=dell+24"+ultra,electronics,152&sr=1-7

The ultrasharp (U) models are better but also about $40 more per screen.

This would be OK for a 27" 1440 screen if you don't need a stand that tilts or has height adjustment https://www.amazon.com/Dell-S2721D-...=dell+27&qid=1603206567&s=electronics&sr=1-14