The best photo-editing laptops are getting thinner and lighter, while simultaneously offering more speed and better battery life. But there's one way in which new laptops are measurably worse than laptops of old: physical connectivity. As laptop manufacturers strive for ever-thinner designs, they also pare down the number of USB ports, and these days you'll also be lucky to find an Ethernet port or SD card reader on the side of a modern thin and light laptop. A worst-case scenario is a device with just two high-speed USB-C ports, where one has to do double duty as the charge socket, leaving you with just a single USB connection for physical data transfer while you're charging.
Thankfully there's no shortage of docking stations that can give you back those lost ports. One convenient dock can provide multiple USB-C and USB-A ports, along with an Ethernet port for wired networking, an SD slot, headphone port and various video connections.
