Laptop Ports: Is USB-C only fine, or should I get HDMI,USB,Audio if I need them?

I even saw one laptop that only had 2 USB-C ports, with 1 of them to use for charging. (Dell XPS 13 for example)

It's very important for me to connect my laptop to a monitor, and to use earbuds, be connected to ethernet, and to have a charger going, all at the same time. I have an old laptop with an HDMI output port, USB, and direct audio jack for earbuds.

I'm struggling to accept that dongles are fast enough or reliable enough. What if I get a HDMI dongle or audio dongle and the connection keeps dropping on my video calls? A direct connections feels "safer" to me than a USB-C splitter.

What do you think. Should I still look for laptops with direct HDMI/Audio/USB connections, or are USB-C only laptops still reliable enough even if you need a dozen different dongles?

My monitor acts as a dock. My monitor is powering my laptop, handling the video output, and has the keyboard, mouse, headset, and camera connected to it.

All I have to do is plugin one cable and I'm done. It's a good setup. The monitor even has a monitor-to-monitor hub so if I get a second monitor, all I have to do is connect the two monitors. Still only one cable coming to my laptop.

One goes to a dock, providing most of the connectivity and charging, the other goes to two daisy-chained thunderbolt displays.

I'd use a single port if it could drive four monitors.

For display out, the HDMI out is generally more consistent, but nothing really wrong with Display port over usbc, it just sometimes needs plugging/replugging.