The Kensington StudioDock turns your iPad into a small iMac

There are plenty of iPad keyboard cases out there that aim to turn Apple’s tablet into a laptop, but the Kensington StudioDock is something completely different: it makes your iPad Pro a world’s smallest iMac.

This is a serious tool for people who are serious about iPad productivity. (Yes, they do exist.) This is a dock that lets you use your USB-C-equipped iPad Pro or Air in portrait or landscape orientation, while connecting more. If you ever sit at your desk with an iPad Pro, the StudioDock might be for you.

Well, if you would like to spend $ 399 anyway.

The StudioDock is mostly made of aluminum and is sturdy enough that you can adjust the iPad’s position without moving it on your desktop, making it easy to switch between portrait and landscape mode or tilt the vertical viewing angle. (An iPad Pro in a StudioDock in portrait mode, for example, is an excellent zoom device.) The build quality of the stand itself is solid, though the back of plastic feels a bit low-rent.

On one side of the dock you will find a USB-C port and an on / off button, while the other one has an SD card slot and a headphone jack. All around is a power connector, three USB-A ports, an HDMI port and a Gigabit Ethernet port. There are also two 7.5W Qi wireless chargers integrated into the base of the standard, and (of course) two Kensington security locks. The iPad Pro connects via USB-C and is on a magnetic plastic panel that supports the jack; the dock is available for 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPads, though the size of the magnetic panel is the only thing that differs between the two versions.

Once your iPad is paired with a keyboard and trackpad or mouse, it’s like having a small touchscreen computer – and nowadays many more ports than most Mac laptops. It’s really very cute if you find things like the idea of ​​internet connections on a tablet treasured.

Even if you do not use a lot of accessories, the StudioDock is easier to use at a desk than a laptop, simply because it raises the screen to a better angle. I remember a recent New York resident cover showing a woman at home with her laptop sitting on a pile of books. There are laptops, of course, but not everyone wants to use them, and I like that the StudioDock means you’re not stuck with a redundant keyboard and trackpad.

An important element of this product is that it is easy enough to move the iPad to and from the dock. It’s still a bit tricky and in a perfect world I would like the StudioDock to use the Smart Connector, but since no one other than Apple and Logitech has ever released products that do use it, I assume Kensington had his reasons – bandwidth no doubt among them. One advantage of this design is that it charges the iPad very quickly at 37.5 W, so I do not have to think about charging it otherwise at home.

Kensington also shipped an Apple Watch charger attached to the USB-C port. It is sold separately after the StudioDock is released. I found it to be a bit plastic, like the back panel of the dock, but it works well. I use an Apple Watch desktop every day, so I did not see much need for this, but if you do not have one yet, it is an easy addition.

The wireless charging instruments are meanwhile also a great addition. You do not get the fastest speeds, but the ability to charge a phone and AirPods during the day is useful and saves space on your desktop compared to separate booklets. I did notice a slight whining sound when devices were fully charged – this is not so uncommon with wireless chargers, but not everyone does, so it’s worth noting.

The StudioMock HDMID port supports 4K monitors at 60Hz and should be ideal for dual-screen iPad settings, but the software is not really there yet from Apple. With just a few apps, you can display different content on each monitor – the rest of the time you have to deal with a pillar mirror of your iPad’s 4: 3 screen. (One clever way to get around this is an app called Shiftscreen, which is basically a browser that lets you run up to four web apps on two screens – useful for things like multitasking in Slack and Asana.) I would personally need iPadOS to get much better support for external monitor before setting up the all-in on an iPad desktop, but if you use a laptop on its own, the 12.9-inch iPad Pro should be large enough for most tasks.

This is how I used the StudioDock most of the time, and it was an amazing experience overall. I really like the trackpad support that was added to iPadOS last year, and it’s great to be able to combine it with a wired mechanical keyboard and still have a bunch of connectivity options. I’ll just say that I generally want to use the StudioDock rather than a laptop on a pile of books.

The StudioDock is apparently a niche product and has its peculiarities. But mostly, Kensington’s attempt to turn the iPad into a computer works. You really have to be a part of the iPad-as-work-machine lifestyle to make sense of it, but the StudioDock and iPad Pro combination is a fast, fun computer that does most of what I want.

My biggest hangover is the price. It costs $ 399.99 for the 12.9-inch iPad Pro version, or $ 379.99 for a model that fits the 11-inch iPad Pro and the 10.9-inch iPad Air. It’s clearly a lot of money to invest in a third-party peripheral – that’s more than some iPads alone cost. And I’ll worry about whether it will work with future iPad Pro designs, as the current Pros have not had a significant update since their launch in 2018.

These are some great reservations, but if you can overcome them, the StudioDock is a great way to work on an iPad. It turns the tablet into a more comfortable, capable, and flexible computer, and I just hope Apple’s software develops to make this kind of use case even better.

Photography by Sam Byford / The Verge