5 ways Surface Dock makes your Surface even more awesome

For those of you Surface fans out there who love to use your Surface in airport lobbies, cafés and anywhere in between, you know how great Surface is for people on-the-go. But when you come back to your home or work office, many of us want to easily connect to our monitors, external mice and keyboards, and any other accessory that can turn your Surface into a full-blown desktop workstation. We’ve recently made that super easy with the introduction of our new Surface Dock. To celebrate we’re taking a closer look at five ways Surface Dock makes your Surface even more awesome.

1. Surface Dock makes you a multi-tasking hero. With 2 miniDisplayPorts (mDP), you can now have 3 screens of real estate to be a productivity master. Crunch your numbers in Excel, check your emails in Outlook, take notes in OneNote, and Skype into a conference call – all without having to switch screens.

I personally use my Surface Dock at work to connect my Surface Book to two UHD monitors (3840 x 2160 @30Hz), Sculpt Ergonomic keyboard and mouse, Ethernet cable and external hard-drive. The USB 3.0 ports make transferring files a breeze, as the data transfer rates are up to 10x faster than on USB 2.0 ports.

Or at home, I connect my printer, 1 external monitor, speakers, and phone to my Surface Dock so I can work and play. Each USB port on the Surface Dock has 7.5W of charging power, so my cell phone and other accessories can charge faster. I can connect my TV through a miniDisplayPort to HDMI adapter when I want to watch TV or movies on a big screen. I also love the fact that it has an audio jack for my headphones or speakers, instantly transforming my home office into an entertainment center.

2. Surface Dock makes your life simpler. No more needing to plug and unplug a crazy number of cables every single time you sit down at your desk. We think your time is way more valuable than that. Just plug in all your cables – miniDisplayPort (x2), Ethernet, USB (x4), power, and audio in your Surface Dock – and never deal with them again. Transform your Surface into a desktop just by connecting the single, flexible SurfaceConnect cable into the SurfaceConnect port. Boom! You’re good to go.

3. Surface Dock brings out your creativity. Just because you’re “docked” doesn’t mean you can’t continue to take advantage of some of the best features of Surface – the touchscreen and Surface Pen. The Surface Dock allows you to use your Surface at the perfect angle by adjusting the multi-position kickstand. Use your Surface Pen to markup webpages on Microsoft Edge, draw on OneNote, and create beautiful things on Creative Cloud (and other partner apps).

4. Surface Dock lets you maximize productivity. For developers, the Surface Dock is an elegant solution for turning your Surface into a powerful development workstation. You can use one external monitor to keep the focus on your code and use the other monitor to handle any open documentation, emulator or apps you’re testing. You can still use the great PixelSense display on the Surface itself as a third screen for team communications, e-mail, web browsing, etc. With the four available USB 3.0 ports, you can connect that favorite keyboard and mouse, a headset, maybe an Xbox controller and any other essential accessory to get your work done. And when you need to take your work to a meeting, on a trip, or just head home for the day, all it takes is a simple tug of the magnetic SurfaceConnect cable and you’re free to go.

5. Surface Dock empowers you to get more done. We know you have a lot of meetings. Sometimes back-to-back. Don’t worry though, your Surface Dock will charge your device while you use it – so you don’t lose power in the middle of that important presentation you were making.

The new Surface Dock is compatible with Surface Book, Surface Pro 4, and Surface Pro 3, and is available for purchase at retail stores, online, and through authorized resellers. All of us on the Surface Team are highly grateful for all the Surface fans out there for the great feedback. We hope you love the Surface Dock as much as we do!

Are you using the new Surface Dock? Let us know on Twitter.

Note: monitors and adapters sold separately. Caution: this product may make you fall in love with your Surface. Even more.

To connect your Surface and Surface Dock to an external monitor, please see our support page here. For a list of compatible monitors and troubleshooting, please check out our page here.