Illegal boarding house tenants told to hide from housing inspectors
"We're too scared to lose houses because the scarcity of the housing here in Queenstown is really hard to get. So that time we don't have any choice [but] to follow his orders because we don't have [a] house to live when he kick us out," he said. 
© 2025 RadioNZ 7:15am OWC USB-C Travel Dock review: Compact professionalism on the go
At a glanceExpert's Rating
Pros
Compact
A good mix of ports
Cons
A little on the slow side
USB-C cable feels a little short for comfort
Our Verdict
OWC’s USB-C Travel Dock provides a nice, compact, affordable alternative to a traditional USB-C dongle.
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OWC’s USB-C Travel Dock isn’t that different than any other hub or dongle, save for its shape: a small rectangular puck that might appeal more than other dongles.
When you take your laptop on the road, I always advise taking along a USB-C hub or dongle, which typically attaches via a short cable. A dongle isn’t the most ergonomically convenient option; it sort of flops around your desk, dragged this way and that by any devices you connect it to.
There’s a small cadre of devices that offer a different approach. One of my favorites, the now-discontinued IOGear Thunderbolt 3 Travel Dock, packed Thunderbolt power inside a compact little plastic slab. Another, the still-available $65 Belkin Thunderbolt 3 Dock Core, does this too. OWC’s USB-C Travel Dock doesn’t include Thunderbolt, but it retains that compact little form factor that I find surprisingly appealing.
Measuring 3.2 inches to a side (and 0.9 inches thick), the OWC USB-C Travel Dock connects to your laptop via a short USB-C cable that measures a bit more than 6 inches. It stores itself neatly into the base of the Travel Dock itself, a nice touch. On the base of the aluminum chassis are four small shallow pads, used to hold the dock in place.
The bottom of the OWC USB-C Travel Dock. The cord feels a bit short, but any longer and it couldn’t be stowed away.Mark Hachman / Foundry
Technically, this is a 5-in-1 hub, as the name is a bit misleading. I typically equate “docking station” as a powered device; in this case, OWC’s device includes a USB-C port for input power only, accepting up to 100W. On either side of the dock sit a pair of clearly labeled 5Gbps USB-A ports. Otherwise, there’s an Ethernet port of undisclosed speed, an SD 4.0 card reader, and an HDMI 2.0 port.
PCWorld’s roundup of the best USB-C hubs and dongles are based on my recommendations, and a USB-C hub is extremely price-sensitive. (Here’s how we test USB-C hubs at PCWorld.) No one wants to pay $100 when a $30 dongle will offer equivalent features. That’s what I like about OWC’s Travel Dock: At press time, it sits around $30. That’s right smack in the middle of my best picks, which range from $20 to $40.
From a stability standpoint, I didn’t notice any problems while working with the OWC USB-C Travel Dock. It connected to various devices and a single display without issue.
Ports are divided up among three sides of the OWC USB-C Travel Dock.Mark Hachman / Foundry
OWC’s USB-C Travel Dock is a compact, affordable dock that provides tidy alternative to a traditional USB-C dongle.
OWC’s USB-C Travel Dock performed flawlessly, streaming a 4K video across a 4K single screen without a hitch, at 60Hz. (It dropped 8 frames in about 72,000 frames overall.) I’ve seen USB-C docks try and output to two 4K displays, and sometimes struggle, so a single display is perfect. The dock didn’t even heat up to temperatures I’d find warm.
Since the USB-C connection is 10Gbps from the laptop, the more data you push across the USB-C cable, the more congestion will occur. While simultaneously transferring data from an SSD and while streaming a 4K video, I noticed evidence of congestion in hitches and stuttering. That’s to be expected, however.
As the icon indicates, the USB-C port on OWC’s USB-C Travel Dock is for power only.Mark Hachman / Foundry
PCMark returned a score of 97.45MB/s while a test SSD was connected. That’s slower than I expected, though I wasn’t sure if OWC’s dock would deliver performance comparable to the Dockcase Smart USB-C Hub 10-in-1 Explorer Edition, which delivered performance of about 130MB/s, accompanied by some stability problems.
I have to mark down for that, but otherwise OWC’s USB-C Travel Dock ran smoothly, cooly, and affordably. I recommend it.
© 2025 PC World 2:45am  
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