The Orico MiniDock Vertical Mac Mini Dock Stand offers more ports and storage for the new Mac mini, without frills. But, sometimes, that’s all you need.
The Mac Mini has always been compact, but the M4 generation’s reworking of the form made it even smaller. The newest model takes up very little desk space, but it seems Orico thinks it can do better.
The Orico MiniDock Vertical Mac Mini Dock Stand is an attempt to minimize the desk footprint of the new Mac mini by thinking vertically. In effect, it’s a vertical stand for the Mac mini that also incorporates a bunch of extra ports into its base.
A typical dock tends to let users exchange the use of one Thunderbolt port in favor of a brace of others, but they don’t tend to deal with the issue that they add to desk clutter. In the case of this dock, it’s intended to fit underneath the Mac mini, and so it takes up as little space as possible.
But unfortunately, it’s only 10 gigabit USB-C. For the $80-ish price, though, that’s good enough.
Orico MiniDock Vertical Mac Mini Dock Stand review – Design
The design of the MiniDock is split between the metal alloy base that does most of the work, and the bit at the top that holds the Mac mini aloft. At 5.3 inches long by 2.56 inches by 1.71 inches, it’s fairly compact and has a bit of a thinner footprint overall than the M4 Mac mini.
Using a scratchproof silicone, the U-shaped trough is intended to hold the Mac mini on its side. You can aim the front and back ports to the front and rear, maintaining access to them.
As a bonus, this orientation keeps the Wi-Fi module exposed, and not blocked by a hunk of metal. Our testing showed no attenuation of Wi-Fi from this dock.
The silicone section does offer a snug fit for the Mac mini, and it doesn’t feel like it will fall out of the enclosure that easily. The additional height does make it somewhat top-heavy, but the low position of the ports and whatever connects to them offsets things a bit.
Underneath are four non-slip feet, which stabilize the structure when fully laden.
The enclosure section itself wouldn’t look out of place as a dock in its own right, if it didn’t have the black silicone upper section attached to it. It looks like a pretty typical dock, complete with Apple-like rounded corner edges.
Each side has a collection of ports, with reasonably easy access to all of them from either side.
Orico MiniDock Vertical Mac Mini Dock Stand review – Ports
When it comes to the selection of ports available, there’s a pretty good selection on offer. It starts off with the inclusion of two USB-C ports that run at 10Gbps, with one offering power delivery at up to 100 Watts.
There are three USB-A ports as well, with one running at 10Gbps and two at 5Gbps. One side also has a pair of memory card slots, labeled as SD and TF, with claimed access speeds of up to 100MB/s for inserted media.
The other side has a HDMI 4K 60Hz port, as well as a Gigabit Ethernet connection. This last one is a bit of an unusual addition for a dock specifically designed to work with a Mac mini, since Apple already includes one in the Mac mini itself.
This could be an inclusion that could be useful when using the dock with other devices, but it’s a bit of a misstep when it comes to the Mac mini itself.
The tenth port is a USB-C connection that connects to the Mac mini and handles video and data. The position of this port is unfortunately on the side, which means you’ll always have a cable coming around from the back and sticking out from the left or right when the dock is in use.
A neater solution to this could’ve been to include this port at the thin rear side. At least the cable would be hidden completely from the front at that position.
The second problem with the port is that it has only a maximum of 10Gbps of bandwidth available to all devices connected to it. You aren’t going to get the full 10Gbps of bandwidth for the other 10Gbps USB-C port on the dock if you have anything else connected and being used at the same time. And, that’s compounded by the storage in the stand.
Again, this is a thing that could’ve been avoided by using Thunderbolt 4 or Thunderbolt 5 for 40Gbps or 80Gbps of bandwidth. That would allow practically all of the ports to be used simultaneously with minimal slowdown, but it’s not an option here.
And, of course, that would drive up the price. Dramatically.
What the dock does provide is a selection of ports, if not the ability to use all of them as speedily as possible at the same time.
Orico MiniDock Vertical Mac Mini Dock Stand review – Storage
Orico offers the dock in two varieties, namely with included storage or empty. The included storage options have built-in SSDs, ranging from 512GB to 4TB in capacity.
The version under review is the dock with the M.2 SSD enclosure, minus storage, so we provided our own. Removing a cover in the base, you can install your own choice of M.2 SSD into the dock, which can be accessed by the connected Mac.
This is handy, as it saves you from needing a separate external storage enclosure clogging up the desk. The problem is, again, one of bandwidth.
Whatever storage you install has to use the same available bandwidth as all other connected peripherals and accessories. It’s stuck sharing the same 10Gbps bandwidth pool as everything else.
This does limit the amount of bandwidth it will have on offer if you’re using the HDMI connection and have other drives connected.
It’s more a convenience addition of it being available storage, rather than one offering blistering speed. So, if you’re buying an M.2 drive to use with this, you shouldn’t bother spending extra for PCIe 4 or 5 storage sticks.
Orico MiniDock Vertical Mac Mini Dock Stand review – Vertically bandwidth challenged
As an idea, Orico’s dock makes a fair bit of sense. While other space-saving docks do so by being a plinth for the Mac mini, this one turns the problem on its side for even more space savings.
However, beyond the addition of a clever silicone holder, this is still basically a dock. It offers a decent selection of ports, and more ways to connect hardware to your Mac.
The main issue with it is the connection to the Mac mini itself. The use of USB-C for this limits the bandwidth for everything connected via the dock.
It’s a neat idea for a dock. It’s just something that doesn’t quite serve Mac power users with more intensive bandwidth requirements.
If you consider it an expensive USB-C drive enclosure that has ports, it’s a pretty good deal. Just don’t expect Thunderbolt speeds.
Orico MiniDock Vertical Mac Mini Dock Stand review – Pros
- Compact dock
- Decent port selection
- M.2 storage slot
Orico MiniDock Vertical Mac Mini Dock Stand review – Cons
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Where to buy the Orico MiniDock Vertical Mac Mini Dock Stand
The Orico MiniDock Vertical Mac Mini Dock Stand is available from Orico directly for $79.99. It’s also available from Amazon for $89.99, with a 10% coupon code available.
