New XSP 13 in combination with DA200

Question

When you buy an new XPS 13 you need a dock because there is no longer a video out on the laptop. When buying you have a lot of options you can choose to use the thunderbolt 3 port. The DA200 is the preferred option and is shown in every marketing shot you see. Now you would expect that this would work flawlessly. The problem is that when I connect my monitor to it (a 3440 by 1440 screen) you cannot get a picture with this resolution. You are restricted to a 2440 by 1080 resolution. I have spent a couple of hours with support only to find out that the DA200 does not support high res screens while for instance the Dell 470-ABMZ does support 4K. The problem is that I would also like to attach a network cable to the dock. Again you have a USB-C to network adapter that can handle this but you have only one USB-C port. So the combination of two single products is worse than the DA200. In my opinion the DA200 should be removed from the accessories list available for the new XPS 13 because it cannot even support the native resolution of 3200 by 1800 on an external screen. And since I bought this product on a business account you cannot return the product. When you check the DA200 no mention is made about resolutions. Only the manual will mention 1920 by 1080 support. I am not amused Dell! Regards, Ronald

shoffmeister · Answer

As an owner of the Dell DA200, I can confirm that support for resolutions higher than 1920x1080 (Full HD) is ... challenging. This is well-advertised though, from my point of view, on the product page ( accessories.ap.dell.com/.../productdetail.aspx )

Keep in mind that the Dell DA200 is not a Thunderbolt device running over (very high bandwidth) PCI Express, but a plain USB device with a USB-C connector, which runs an "external" HDMI adapter and an "external" network adapter over (reasonably fast) USB.

Your best options to address your challenges are to purchase

* one Displayport adapter cable (about USD 30) and plug that into the USB-C port

* one dirt cheap USB 3.0 combined Gigabit Ethernet adapter and USB hub and plug that into one of the USB-A ports (I paid USD 8 shipped from China - imports are readily available at about double the price)

This extracts maximum performance out of the XPS 13 9360.

R.Catersels · Answer

The problem is that the Dutch version of that webpage gives a lot less detail about the tech specs.

accessories.euro.dell.com/.../productdetail.aspx

If these pages would be the same I would not have bought the product.

Regards,

Ronald

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