I’m potentially looking at getting the TS5 Plus or TS5. How is it otherwise? Do all the ports work as advertised even though not running on Thunderbolt 5 and using the USB4 v1? Are you using your 10GB Ethernet & is it running at full speed?
Really curious, even though I’d be using Windows 11 Pro, wondering how it goes not using Thunderbolt 5 as the source.
I haven’t tried the ethernet port yet, but generally it seems like all of the ports are functional.
Thanks, I’ll have to consider looking at getting it once they become available outside of the US. I’m in Australia.
Is it possible to have both a docking station and the 180W power brick plugged in at the same time? Or is there a 180W PD docking station?
It’s possible. If you plug in dock and then 180W adapter, it first negotiates PD with dock, then with the power adapter and seamlessly transitions from one to another, so the dock doesn’t reboot when you plug/unplug the 180W adapter. When you unplug the 180W adapter, it will still charge with the dock.
I got the Lenovo Thunderbolt 5 Smart Dock 7500 and it works “perfectly” with my first gen Laptop 16 in Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2
Only problems are:
I’m still debugging the second item, maybe it’s related to how my webcam or audio devices are plugged in or set up.
On the plus side, I know the dock charges Laptop 16 at 180W because the Laptop 16 doesn’t switch to the Framework power adapter, if it’s plugged in after the dock
Edit: Another issue I’m seeing is that the dock disconnects briefly when starting a game. I was able to fix this by choosing Hybrid Access Mode in the AMD GPU settings (I have a 7700S module installed), which disables the graphics mux. Since I’m using external monitors, I don’t need the mux
I’ve had nothing but issues with my Lenovo dock: Displays don't work on Desktop motherboard 128GB with Lenovo Dock 40B0
One upping you @Gmanny :–)
Got myself Dell Pro Thunderbolt 5 Smart Dock SD25TB5 and everything seems to work perfectly! 240w working as expected (with problems related to the 4.02 bios of fw16), LAN reporting as 2.5Gb and my 4k@240 display doesn’t seem to have any issues either.
I accidentally bought the “Smart” version instead of normal one, but I think there is 0 difference between besides the increase of my paranoia (the smart version has the wireless provisioning provided by dell).
What I am interested in is knowing what actual DP bandwidth is possible with it. The inputs are dp2.1 with no UHBR labeling (maybe they dont need them cuz it’s a dummy connector?) and as far as I manged to understand it can do <40Gb with TB5 host?
Anyway I hope I wont need to upgrade for at least 3-5 years.
If on Linux, could you check whether the device is visible on LVFS? fwupdmgr get-devices and fwupdmgr get-updates should show it.
There might even be a firmware update available for it.
Dell’s 3-year warranty vs the (non-EU) 1-year baseline, seemingly consistent LVFS participation, and explicit support of Linux tickles me the right way.
I actually chose Lenovo over Dell when doing research, but I’m not saying my values are more valid than yours 
I recently bought a UGreen Thunderbolt 5 Revodock Max 2131 for my FW16. I don’t need display outputs since my laptop has a dGPU and I prefer that external displays get driven by the GPU, so it seemed like a better option for me. I was looking for something to have more USB-C and USB-A ports. It’s also more accessible in Europe than CalDigit or other brands. So far I’ve had few issues with it and it has been great to use to keep external hard drives plugged in and “centralize” the stuff I have plugged in while at my desk. I did have some power delivery weirdness when I first started using it, where at first it was preferring the dock over the charger for power delivery. After plugging and unplugging the charger and the dock a few times, and doublechecking to make sure the EC reported 120W total power as expected from the 180W charger, I haven’t run into that issue again. Recommended for anyone in a similar situation who doesn’t need Display Port or HDMI outputs from the dock and wants to have the higher number of USB ports.
It does of course, I had a HD22Q before and from it I gathered that Dell is pretty consistent at providing updates for their docks over lvfs. Both of them show up and have multiple updates and are separated in each submodule (base + retimers + lan + …).
Although, there might be a bug with mostly Dell and fwupdmgr where the updates seem to desync between different parts of the dock, but even with this the dock works.
@Gmanny I am interested why you chose lenovo, I see it has a changabe host cable(?) which is a huge bonus but otherwise they are very similar. Honestly, I would much rather framework make their own dock by using all the expansion modules.
Yeah, I liked that it has a removable cable so that I can change to a 2-meter one in the future as they become cheap. Plus the power adapter is also USB-C, although a proprietary wattage of 265W. I also anecdotally heard of better support and issue resolution from Lenovo than Dell, but it’s moot now given that Dell also works fine
I wonder how quickly I’ll regret having 180W instead of 240W charging.
Regardless, those docks are awesome, future-proof and backwards-compatible, it’s very nice to see.
The only thing I can tell is that both are miles better than HP.
Btw, does the proprietary charger support PD and if so, what’s the max V/A? I already saw 2 products from Dell that work as PD+, so max V that they can do but allow for higher than 5A for supported devices.
That’s for sure
It’s a 180W USB-C adapter, which can do up to 265W at 36V. Interesting design - it doesn’t go over 36V and just compensates with higher voltage. I wonder if the dock negotiates lower voltages with the charger if the laptop asks for lower voltages from the dock.
It’s a F-ing brick, though. It weighs a ton and is huge, probably 3 or 4 times the volume of the Framework’s 180W adapter.
Does the power button work on your dock btw? Mine didn’t when I just set the dock up, but now it functions fully - can turn the laptop on from Hibernate and turn it off either from BIOS or Windows.
Yep, it works and is mentioned in the manual to have proper PD handling. Idk about MAC passthrough tho, haven’t tried.
The dell has 330w brick and its the size of the dock itself, lol.
If it’s in PD spec, until recently I’ve been on the BIOS 3.05. Upgraded to 4.01 now and maybe that’s why the power button started working.
I can confirm that the power button on my Dell WD19DCS works now. I’ve got the FW16 on openSUSE Tumbleweed and have recently updated both the laptop BIOS/EC and the dock firmware, so can’t tell which one did the trick. The laptop will start from powered off and if running, will open the shutdown/reboot dialog.
Chiming in here with a Framework 13, 13th gen Intel, on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. (Previously this was an 11th gen Intel but I upgraded.) For several years I was using a Mokin USB-c dock and it was fine but recently I started getting some strange behavior, it seemed like even VERY minor movement or vibrations was enough to make the system believe the dock had disconnected and then would immediately reconnect. I ruled out the physical dock itself as I could reproduce the problem with different physical docks (I own several). It also didn’t seem to matter whether I had power plugged into it, or how many devices were plugged in. Very strange.
I went out to eBay and I got a Razer Chroma Thunderbolt 4 dock and a good quality cable on Amazon. I kept the Mokin dock but now it’s plugged into the USB-c out port on the Razer. All my problems have gone away. It’s rock solid. Bought a second one for my home office, in fact.
