CalDigit Dock Leasing for High-Performance Workstations
Leasing CalDigit docks enables your business to deploy premium connectivity solutions with predictable monthly payments and no upfront cost. CalDigit dock leasing supports high-performance workflows with Thunderbolt 4 connectivity, multiple 4K or 8K display support, and up to 98W power delivery—ideal for demanding creative or technical environments. Keep your teams connected, productive, and ready to scale with reliable desktop expansion.
Smarter, streamlined productivity tools for your team
One Cable, Full Setup: Choosing the Right Docking Station for Work
This guide walks you through how to choose the right dock for your business, what the jargon actually means, and which of our docking stations fits which kind of team.
Quick Summary
If you’re equipping a team, the laptop is only half the setup. The other half is everything that turns it into a proper workstation and a good docking station does that with one cable.
Your people plug in once, and their laptop charges, their monitors wake up, and every peripheral reconnects exactly where they left it. No adapters, no tangle, no lost minutes at the start of the day.
For hybrid teams, hot-desking offices and laptop-first businesses, it’s one of the highest-impact upgrades you can roll out. We lease and manage IT for UK businesses every day, so we’ve seen what works on real desks.
This is the single most important factor, because it dictates how much your dock can actually do.
USB-C docks are the everyday workhorses. They’re affordable, widely compatible and more than enough for most office roles — email, documents, video calls, spreadsheets and dual monitors.
Thunderbolt docks (currently Thunderbolt 5) sit at the top end. They offer dramatically higher bandwidth, which matters when you’re driving multiple high-resolution displays and moving large files at speed — think creative, engineering, data and video work.
A quick check: your laptop needs to support the same standard to get the full benefit. A Thunderbolt 5 dock is brilliant on a Thunderbolt-equipped MacBook Pro, but plug it into a basic USB-C laptop and you won’t unlock its top-tier performance.
If you’re not sure what your devices support, that’s exactly the kind of thing our team will check for you before you order.
2. Power delivery (will it charge the laptop?)
Power Delivery, measured in watts (W), is how much charge the dock pushes back into your laptop through that single cable. Get this wrong and your laptop slowly drains even while it’s “plugged in”.
65–100W comfortably covers most ultrabooks, business laptops and MacBook Air-class machines.
140W is what you want for powerful, high-spec laptops and larger MacBook Pro models that draw more under load.
As a rule of thumb: match or exceed your laptop’s own charger wattage and you’ll be fine.
3. Displays and video outputs
Decide how many external monitors each person needs, and at what resolution, then check two things: the number of video ports and the type (HDMI, DisplayPort or Thunderbolt).
One or two screens for general office work → a dual-display dock is plenty.
Three screens for finance, trading, design, dev or operations → look for a triple-display dock.
Also confirm the dock supports the resolution you need (4K is the common business standard) across all the screens at once, not just one.
4. Ports and peripherals
Count what actually lives on the desk: keyboard, mouse, webcam, headset, phone charger, USB stick, SD card reader, external drive. Then make sure the dock has enough of the right ports — and ideally a couple to spare. A dock that runs out of ports on day one just creates a new pile of adapters, which rather defeats the point.
5. Wired networking and security
Most business-grade docks include a Gigabit Ethernet port. For office desks this is a genuine advantage: a wired connection is faster, more stable and more secure than Wi-Fi, which matters for video calls, large transfers and security-conscious environments. Every dock in our range includes Ethernet.
6. Compatibility — Mac, Windows, or both
Mixed device fleets are the norm now, so it pays to think about compatibility across your whole team. Some docks are happiest on Windows, some are tuned for high-spec Macs, and several are genuinely universal. If you run a blended Mac-and-Windows office, lean toward the universal options so any laptop can use any desk.
Not sure how to match these to your laptops? That’s the bit we’re here for. Tell us what your team uses and we’ll point you to the right dock — no guesswork required. Get in touch.
Our Recommended Docking Stations
Here are the docks we’d happily put on any business’s desks, from a tidy entry-level setup right up to a high-end creative workstation.
From £0.75/week · USB-C · 100W-140W power · 2× DisplayPort + 1× HDMI · Gigabit Ethernet
Small, light and seriously capable. The Nano 3x packs multi-display support, a generous 140W of charging and daisy-chain expandability into a compact body that’s perfect for hot desks and hybrid setups.
If you want the cleanest possible one-cable experience at the lowest cost, start here.
Ideal for: hybrid workers, hot-desking offices, anyone wanting maximum value.
From £1.75/week · USB / USB-C · 100W power · 2× DisplayPort + 1× HDMI · Gigabit Ethernet
The dependable office workhorse. It drives two crisp 4K displays, charges at 100W and plays nicely with both Windows and Mac, making it our go-to recommendation for blended teams who just want everything to work.
A comprehensive set of ports keeps the whole desk connected through one tidy cable.
Ideal for: general office teams running a mix of Mac and Windows laptops.
From £1.75/week · USB-C · 100W power · 3× DisplayPort · Gigabit Ethernet
When two screens aren’t enough, the DX3 steps up to three 4K displays without breaking the bank.
It’s the sweet spot for finance, operations, dev and anyone whose productivity lives across multiple windows at once — all from a single USB-C connection.
Ideal for: power users and high-productivity teams who need three screens.For Mac Users & Premium Desk Setups
From £2.95/week · USB-C · 140W power · 2× HDMI + 1× DisplayPort · Gigabit Ethernet
A premium 14-in-1 dock that does almost everything. Triple-display support, a strong 140W of charging and smart power management mean it comfortably handles demanding setups across Mac and high-spec Windows machines.
If you want plenty of ports and headroom in a single, polished unit, this is it.
Ideal for: premium multi-display users who want one dock to do the lot.For Touch-First & Interactive Work
From £3.95/week · Thunderbolt 5 · 140W power · 15 ports · Gigabit Ethernet
This is where things get serious. With next-generation Thunderbolt 5 bandwidth, 15 ports and 140W charging, the TS5 is built for high-performance, multi-display environments where speed is non-negotiable. A favourite for high-spec Mac setups and demanding creative or technical work.
Ideal for: creative, engineering and data teams on Thunderbolt-equipped machines.For Multitaskers & Data-Heavy Roles
From £4.45/week · Thunderbolt 5 · 140W power · Thunderbolt 5 ports · Gigabit Ethernet · Built-in NVMe SSD
Our top-of-the-range pick. The Echo 13 combines blazing Thunderbolt 5 connectivity and 140W charging with integrated high-speed SSD storage — so editors, photographers and anyone working with huge files get expansion, power and lightning-fast local storage in one unit. The cleanest possible high-end workstation.
Ideal for: high-end creative workstations that move large files all day.For Hybrid Workers & Call-Heavy Roles
We’ve been kitting out UK businesses for 40 years, and a docking station is rarely bought on its own — it’s part of a wider setup of laptops, monitors and accessories. Leasing it all together, on one simple monthly agreement, keeps things tidy and affordable.
Discover docking stations designed to expand your device’s connectivity and transform your workspace. From multi‑display setups to fast charging and high‑speed ports, our range helps you streamline cables, boost productivity and create a clean, efficient workstation.
Find the right docking station to connect more, work smarter, and simplify your setup.
Surface 13″ vs 13.8″: Does 0.8 Inches Actually Matter?
Two Copilot+ PCs, 0.8 inches apart on paper — but very different machines underneath. Here’s how the Surface Laptop 13″ and Surface Laptop 13.8″ compare for IT teams leasing across a business, and which model belongs with which role.
Quick Summary
On paper, the Microsoft Surface Laptop 13″ and the Surface Laptop 13.8″ (8th Edition) sit a fraction of an inch apart. Both are Copilot+ PCs, both run Intel Core Ultra (Series 3) silicon, and both have a 3:2 PixelSense touchscreen.
But when you look closer 0.8 inches turns into a meaningful fork in the road: different displays, different specs and different features.
For IT teams and business owners about to lease these across a team, those differences shape who gets which device.
Both panels are 3:2, touch-enabled, and individually colour-calibrated. That’s where the similarity ends.
Display
Surface 13″
Surface 13.8″
Resolution
1920 × 1280 (178 PPI)
2304 × 1536 (201 PPI)
Refresh rate
Up to 60 Hz
Up to 120 Hz
Brightness
500 nits
600 nits
Contrast
1000:1
1300:1
HDR / Dolby Vision IQ
No
Yes
For email, documents, and Teams, the 13″ panel is genuinely good. For anyone working with images, video, dashboards, or design tools all day, the 13.8″ is a different class of display — sharper, brighter, smoother, and HDR-accurate.
The 13″‘s Intel Core Ultra 5 handles typical office workloads comfortably. What it can’t do is scale as far: 24GB of RAM is the maximum. For finance teams, analysts, developers, and anyone running large datasets, the 13.8″ is the only one of the two that has the headroom — up to 64GB with options up to Intel Core Ultra 7 and X7.
Both deliver the same 50 TOPS NPU (Intel AI Boost), so all Copilot+ features (Recall, Click to Do, Studio Effects, AI-powered search) run identically on either.
Models and Configurations
Both laptops come in the same core build options — your choice of processor, 256GB / 512GB / 1TB storage, and (on the 13.8″) up to 64GB RAM — all on a removable Gen 4 SSD.
Where they differ is the security hardware you can add at order. The 13″ comes in standard configurations only. The 13.8″ can be ordered as standard, or specced with two business-grade extras:
Integrated privacy screen — a built-in filter that narrows the viewing angle so on-screen content stays unreadable to anyone beside or behind the user. Ideal for finance, legal, HR, or anyone working with sensitive data in open-plan offices, on trains, or in client sites.
Smart Card Reader — a built-in reader for physical smart-card authentication, often a requirement in government, healthcare, and other regulated or high-security environments.
Both share the same USB-A 3.2 port and DisplayPort 2.1 over USB-C.
Two things to flag here. First, the 13″ charges over USB-C and ships with a 45W USB-C wall charger (in select markets and configs); for faster charging you’ll want a 60W+ USB-C PD charger.
Second, the 13″ has no Surface Connect port. If your business is already standardised on Surface Dock infrastructure, the 13″ won’t slot in — you’d be looking at USB-C docks instead.
USB4 on the 13.8″ runs at four times the bandwidth of the 13″‘s USB 3.2, and supports a third external 4K display.
Security and Biometrics
Both are Windows 11 Secured-core PCs with Microsoft Pluton TPM 2.0 and full Microsoft Defender support, so they’re equally manageable from an IT fleet perspective.
Biometrics is where they differ:
Surface 13″: Windows Hello fingerprint reader built into the power button
Surface 13.8″: Windows Hello facial recognition with Enhanced Sign-in Security
For hot-desking, frequent docking and undocking, or regulated environments where face authentication is preferred for compliance, the 13.8″ has the edge.
Neither model supports pen input. Teams that need pen-and-touch should look at the Surface Pro instead.
Which Should You Lease, and for Whom?
For most teams, the Surface Laptop 13″ is the smart default. It’s lighter, cheaper, and shares the things that actually matter day-to-day with its bigger sibling: the same 50 TOPS Copilot+ NPU, the same removable Gen 4 SSD, Windows 11 Pro, and Secured-core management. So the AI features, the security posture, and the IT manageability are identical.
Reserve the Surface Laptop 13.8″ for the roles that really need more: anyone scaling past 24GB of RAM, driving a triple-4K dock, leaning on the sharper 120Hz HDR display for design or data work, or where face-unlock is a compliance requirement. For those people the premium is money well spent. For everyone else, it isn’t.
