Introduction, Specifications, Pricing and Availability

Desktop docks are nothing new. We first looked at the ThermalTake BlacX two years ago and love the idea of being able to use raw HDDs without opening our computer cases. If you are someone like me with several drives sitting around, the idea is brilliant. The early models had a few shortfalls, though, mainly their reliance on the aging USB 2.0 protocol and placing the power button on the back of the dock. The latter issue was due to the urge to save money at the R&D level. With the button at the back you had to reach around the dock which was kind of a pain in the butt.

Today we are looking at a desktop dock that uses USB 3.0 and has the power button in a place that makes sense. The MUKii TransImp HDD Dock on the surface has everything going for it, but we will need to dig deeper into pricing and the performance of the unit before giving it a thumbs up or thumbs down.

Let's take a look at the specs.

Specifications, Pricing and Availability

There isn't a whole lot to these desktop docking stations. They sit on your desk, you plug drives into them, hit a power button and within a few seconds your computer is ready to read and write data to the drive. The main variables are the interface; eSATA, USB 2.0 or USB 3.0 and how easy it is to turn the dock on and off. MUKii is giving you a couple of other variables; they make both black and white units. From experience the black desktop docks show dust a lot more than the white models; just fair warning.

The MUKii TransImp Dock uses either USB 3.0 or 2.0 depending on what you have available. MUKii also makes a USB 2.0 / eSATA model if you are just not ready to jump on the 3.0 train just yet. When it comes to availability, we were not able to find the TIP-D180U3 model that we are testing today at Newegg, but after a quick search we found the unit at Mwave.com for 38.40 USD. This is around 8 Dollars more than the ineo Tech Dock we tested last month.