Best Prices Today: Baseus Nomos NU1 Spacemate Air 12-in-1 (Mac) Docking Station

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$139.99

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The Baseus Nomos Mac Air NU1 Spacemate 12-in-1 Docking Station has a long name but a decent set of ports at affordable price. It’s a DisplayLink dock, meaning that it offers a simple(ish) solution to Apple’s frustrating multiple-display limitations for its lesser-powered Macs such as the M1 and M2 MacBooks.

These excellent but non-Pro laptops are restricted to just one external monitor without help from third-party software such as DisplayLink. Using the Baseus Spacemate dock after installing the free software enables these MacBooks to run two external displays, albeit here at a 2.5K QHD rather than 4K resolution.

The Spacemate seems to offer a lot but on closer inspection it lacks some functions that we’d expect of a dock. Although it seems quite limited as a full ‘dock’, it can be quite a versatile DisplayLink ‘hub’, especially when connected to a wall charger. Even without one, it’s an attractive portable dock but first study its limitations before being hooked by the price.

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Baseus

Specs and features

• USB-C upstream connector to laptop (90W PD 3.0)





• 2x USB-C (10Gbps)





• 2x USB-A (5Gbps)





• 2x USB-A (480Mbps, 4.5W)





• 2x DisplayPort 1.4 ports





• 2x HDMI 2.0 ports





• Gigabit Ethernet





• 100W power via USB-C port (no supply)

In some ways this dock is more of a high-powered hub. Although its specs let it down in places, it comes into its own as a portable hub with docking station aspirations.

It connects to the laptop via its built-in braided USB-C 2.6ft cable that can carry data at 10Gbps and power at 90W to the MacBook when connected to a wall charger. You need to supply the wall charger yourself, although the MacBook’s own should suffice.

The Spacemate is not the dock for you if you require data transfer at the highest bandwidth. A Mac with Thunderbolt 3 or 4 ports support 40Gbps and the most recent Thunderbolt 5 Macs can handle 80Gbps, so 10Gbps USB-C is not for the professional data warrior. For most of us Mac mortals, however, 10Gbps should be fine.

Power can be supplied to the dock itself using a USB-C charger and cable (note that neither is included so use your MacBooks or one of the other best USB-C chargers we recommend). Most desk-bound docks are weighed down by an external power brick, but the Baseus Spacemate is nimbler and can even draw enough power from the laptop to operate with power coming in, but with caveats.

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Simon Jary

There are a further six USB ports: two 5Gbps USB-A and two 480Mbps USB-A ports for legacy devices, but just two 10Gbps USB-C ports. None can output any real power to the connected devices, which might put you off but it is unlikely to bother people who choose this dock for its portability rather than wanting it to sit permanently on their desk as the center of their computing setup.

Four USB-A ports seem too many these days when most devices should be using USB-C, and two of the Type A ports are very limited in data transfer (USB 2.0’s 480Mbps) so good only for input devices such as a keyboard and mouse if you haven’t yet converted to wireless versions or basic memory sticks.

When hooked up to a wall charger, the Baseus Spacemate can carry enough power (90W) for all but the 16-inch MacBook Pro (which prefers 140W to fast charge), but some of the things