Henge Docks 11-inch Air Dock review

If you’re using your MacBook Air as your main computer, but fancy working on a bigger screen when you’re at home or in the office, the HengeDocks Air Dock (11-inch and 13-inch models available) could be the product you’re looking for.

The stylish white plastic stand looks like something Apple would have designed itself, and keeps your MacBook Air sat vertically on your desk, so it doesn’t take up much room while you’re using it. As a piece of design, it’s certainly a triumph.

The Henge Dock is certainly an attractive way of using your MacBook Air on a desk.

Connecting your laptop is simply a matter of sliding it into the slot, being careful to line-up its USB and Thunderbolt ports with the matching connectors inside the dock. Once in place, you then have to plug in your MacBook Air’s MagSafe connector, which sits on top of the laptop when it’s docked. There’s a clip to keep the cable tidy and out of the way.

Make sure you slide you MacBook Air in carefully, as you have to line up its USB and Thunderbolt ports with the connectors inside the dock.

In order to get your MacBook Air to turn on while it’s docked, you must have a keyboard, mouse and power cable connected to it. You can then tap the keyboard or waggle the mouse to wake it up. It all works neatly, but there are a few things that we think could be done better.

For starters there’s only a single USB port on the dock, but once you’ve plugged in the required keyboard, it only leaves one USB port free at the top of the MacBook Air. We’d have preferred the Air Dock to have a USB hub built-in, with a port or two extra at the front. Extra things, such as USB Ethernet port and soundcard would have been nice, too.

A USB hub and Ethernet port would have been nice.

Effectively, then, the Air Dock is more of a stand with pass-through connectors for the ports on the right-hand side of the MacBook Air. That’s not to say it’s not useful and it’s certainly incredibly attractive, but it’s also a lot of money for something that’s ultimately very basic.