A docking station is one of the few accessories that is genuinely hard to build well, because it has to route power, high-speed data and video through one small enclosure without any of them interfering with the others.

What we look at when we open one

• Thermal path. Controllers run warm. Whether the heat reaches the chassis or sits trapped in plastic tells you a lot about sustained throughput.
• Shielding. High-speed lanes running next to power without shielding is a common cost saving, and a common cause of flaky peripherals.
• Port anchoring. Ports soldered to the board with no mechanical bracing are the usual failure point after a year of cable swaps.

None of this is visible from the outside, which is exactly why we open them.