Just got a Nexdock360, too. I bought it as a replacement for my secondary screen, which is larger, needs some extra keyboard and a lot of space and cabelling, as a front end for small devices.
My very first impressions are:
- small and light, looks and feels good
- for a 13.3" device it has pretty large keys, same size as a normal keyboard.
- glare display (!)
- connection with Librem5 was smooth and simple
Unfortunately, there are some features, that do not yet work out of the box here at all, yet:
-
Touch screen. While i can control the nexdock settings using the touch screen, it is not recognized by the L5, yet. Hmm, i can confirm @nico202 findings. Touching the right side of the screen has some scrolling effect on the L5, while the cursor stays where it is, meaning that both geometry and buttons are messed up in some way. Most likely a problem with the usbhid driver and/or the nexdock’s usb descriptors.
-
Speaker. The nexdock’s speakers are not recognized by L5.
Random notes:
-
Screen blanking, power management, convergence still has some software and usability glitches with funny effects. Anyway, it is almost there. Using “Display > Single Display” properly blanks L5’s screen and let the nexdock appear as a notebook. I could control everything from the nexdock. When L5 sends a blank, the nexdock shows a bright white screen announcing to be “ready to connect”. Pressing a key then wakes the L5 up to show the login screen on the nexdock. Very nice! But letting the nexdock be “ready to connect” for a while (2-3 min), it switches off (saying “power saving”). By this, the L5 and nexdock get disconnected, so the login screen then appears on the L5 and the nexdock needs to be configured again as the primary screen. Perhaps, something along the kanshi material above, i.e. a more persistent configuration would improve usability on L5’s side, but the nexdock does also not behave optimal here, showing a white screen, while a black one was intended. The only alternative is to disable screen blanking completely. So that works, but is not fully usable in practice. Hmm, i think this needs to be fixed on both sides.
-
Touchpad. I do have the same problem with touchpads as @nico202 does. One can deactivate it by a function key. My palm rest preferences aside, it seems to work well.
-
The L5’s battery appears to be very slowly charging (1-2%/h) when connected to the nexdock with varying (shrinking and growing) estimates. I’m not sure how loading the L5 via nexdock will interact with the nexdock’s power saving and blanking when the screen is turned off.
-
The nexdock’s USB-C “data” port works well with a docking station. I tried at least a mouse and wired network. Hmm, wifi 5.3 GHz works quite well now in Byzantium and the nexdock has a micro-SD slot. So i guess, an extra dock will normally not be needed.
-
The keyboard has a back light.
-
Since video playback was a question: it appears to be smooth for me in a quick test.
Hope it helps. For me, the most interesting point is to get the nexdock’s touch screen going with L5.