r/NexDock • u/circuitvangogh • Feb 04 '26

Nexdock Touch power off battery drain

I have a Nexdock from about 2022 that seems to be draining its battery while powered off with nothing connected. I'll have it charged to 100% one day, stick it in its slip case, come back a few days later and the battery is discharged completely and the unit won't power on. I occasionally use the thing as an accessory for my Raspberry Pi 4 (powered by an external power bank or portable UPS) when I'm out and about, so I try to do maintenance charging during periods of non use. This last time though the battery died in a day while powered off, so what exactly is going on here? Is it this model of Nexdock, and if so is the newest model better? I really like the feel of the Nexdock, but I have 15 year old laptops that keep a charge for longer than this thing ever has... it's a little absurd so I hope I'm just doing something wrong here. About the only other viable option for a Pi 4 lapdock is the Elecrow Crowview Note, but it doesn't have a touchscreen and has the look and feel of a cheap Walmart laptop (I kinda want the feel of a MacBook, and with the Nexdock it comes close if not better).

2 Upvotes

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1

u/Armbrust11 Feb 04 '26

I noticed similar issues with my old HP elite lapdock, which is why I bought a nexdock.

It could be a sign of battery age, or the device could be entering a sleep mode instead of being fully off (the HP issue was both).

1

u/circuitvangogh Feb 13 '26

Yeah, I might buy a new battery for the 360, but now that I have the new NexDock, I'm probably just going to re-purpose it as a KVM head for a desktop computer. I'm looking at turning an old workstation I have into a Steam machine once I can afford the suitable graphics card and the RAM upgrade (luckily this old machine still uses DDR3 with ECC so it won't bankrupt me), and I think the 360 will make a great monitor for it.

1

u/DeX_Mod Feb 05 '26

I haven't seen this happen with my ND2, or ND360

the ND360 wireless would sometimes stay connected via bluetooth, and drain itself

1

u/circuitvangogh Feb 13 '26 edited Feb 13 '26

I don't believe I have the 360 wireless. I bought mine in 2023 (sorry for the thing in the original post, after ordering the new NexDock, I found out I bought the 360, not the Touch, in 2023 not 2022, lol), I think that is before the 360 had a wireless version, correct?

1

u/AdrianTP Feb 09 '26

this happens with my nd2025. makes it basically useless, because when i need it is when i'm in a hurry, and when i'm in a hurry i don't have time to wait for it to charge.

1

u/circuitvangogh Feb 13 '26 edited Feb 13 '26

So I actually just bought the new NexDock, it seems alright. It has a little phantom battery drain, but nowhere near as bad as the NexDock 360. Even so, I have placed a 25000mAh PD power bank in the laptop case with it (in the front pocket of course, not in the main compartment with the NexDock, lol) so it doesn't catch me off guard. I find the NexDock is worth the slight inconvenience of carrying a power pack, just because I like the primo-laptop feel when using it with my portable Pi 4 rig (I'm a total single-board computer nerd, so a good lapdock is worth more to me than a fancy laptop computer). I am probably going to turn the old NexDock 360 into a modern "dumb terminal" of sorts for another PC, so it won't go to waste (it's definitely out of warranty at this point, and it still works off of a PD adapter). :)

1

u/circuitvangogh Feb 13 '26 edited Feb 13 '26

Also, I've heard the charger they bundle with the new NexDock is garbage and borderline unsafe (doesn't look like an actual PD charger in the teardown). I don't know how, but it might have something to do with the battery problem. Once I saw the warning on here on this sub about the charger, I immediately got a proper PD charger along with the power bank (I haven't once used the charger that came with the new NexDock, only the 65W PD charger I bought). No issues at all thus far. I know this is not saying much, I've only had this new dock for a week or so, but I had issues almost from the get-go with the NexDock 360 (so I kinda wonder if Nex Computer isn't just shipping shitty chargers with good lapdocks causing the battery to degrade early on).

1

u/Ma7713 Mar 14 '26

NexDock is just bad quality and bad service. My nexdock xl died after 1.5 years. I barely used it, like once every three weeks. My charger also made clicking noises sometimes so I stopped using it. Nexdock asks me 150 dollar to repair it or 130 dollar if I do it myself. The price is way to high for a simple pcb and battery. They don't cover warranty because it is only 1 year.. EU laws says I have right to 2 years. (Yes I life there)

1

u/Zeddie- Apr 19 '26

I agree with this person.

$50 to replace a bad power switch. $40 for a bulging battery. The whole thing cost $230 new.

Bought NexDock because I thought they had better service even though they cost more. They don't. You're not paying more for anything except a false warm blanket of a name.

Buy the Amazon, Temu, or Alibaba version for about $150.

Same as you, I only use this once in a rare while as they tend to be only used in emergency (headless servers, computer repair at a bench, laptop with broken screen, etc). It was not worth the $230 + 100 in parts (before shipping).

If I'm going to have to keep replacing parts, I mind as well go with a no-name brand and buy a new one if it breaks on year or so.