Anthony J. Martinez

A Truly Functional Dock for the Librem 14

When I previously wrote about the joys of using a functional USB-C dock with the Librem 14, I spoke too soon. The dock I originally purchased, along with the power supply I bought with it, caused more trouble than they were worth. These included:

As one might imagine, this drove me insane and I quickly stopped using that dock at all. Several months later, the issuance of a new work laptop (Lenovo X13) included the option to get a Lenovo Thinkpad USB-C Dock Gen 2.

This thing just works. In more than two weeks of use, my laptop has not randomly shut off on AC power. When I plug the USB-C cable into the right-side port, it starts charging if charging is needed. Every time. Video never randomly stops working either. Audio is great, the ethernet device can fully saturate my home network, and I have plenty of ports to use so the only thing plugged into the laptop itself is the USB-C cable.

If you do happen upon one of these docks, do note that updating its firmware will require a Windows PC with support for use of a USB-C dock. That, for me, is satisfied by my work-issued X13. This will have to work until there's a more open option available that is also proven to work reliably with the Librem 14.