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USB-C hubs and my slow descent into madness (2021)

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Re: USB-C hubs and my slow descent into madness (2021)

#251

Post by ben7799 »

moritonal wrote: post #7

If you want a decent dock you have to spend a bit of money. I went through this pain before accepting the cost and buying a CalDigit Thunderbolt 4 Element Hub[1]. Run's two 4k displays at 60Hz, any peripheral and charges my laptop. So good I bought a second. 1. https://www.caldigit.com/thunderbolt-4-element-hub/

Caldigit is junk just like most of the others.

I just had to get IT to swap mine out at work last week.

We have hundreds of CalDigit and OWC docks.. tons have failed. I had an OWC one fail a couple years ago as well.

And yah, these things cost as much as a Chromebook or a cheap windows notebook.

Re: USB-C hubs and my slow descent into madness (2021)

#253

Post by bredren »

wwalexander wrote: post #154
moritonal wrote: post #7

If you want a decent dock you have to spend a bit of money. I went through this pain before accepting the cost and buying a CalDigit Thunderbolt 4 Element Hub[1]. Run's two 4k displays at 60Hz, any peripheral and charges my laptop. So good I bought a second. 1. https://www.caldigit.com/thunderbolt-4-element-hub/

I’d just like to chime in with the Kensington SD5700T [1]. I’ve tried a CalDigit TS3 Plus, an Anker PowerExpand 13-in-1, and the Kensington has by far been the most reliable. It doesn’t have built-in HDMI/DisplayPort out, but it’s easy to buy the appropriate cable to connect to your monitor (I recommend Club3D [2]). Especially if you’re trying to use an HDMI 2.1 or DisplayPort 1.4 display, as I’ve found most built-in…

I’d like to chime in to highlight how totally underrated the Blackmagic eGPU series Apple collaborated on was.

They are virtually silent, have capable, reliable TB3 hubs. Outside the Mac Pro line, the BM eGPUs offered graphics capability to macs going back years that was only surpassed with the recent ASi MBPs.

They are remarkably stable and ultimately a great value.

Re: USB-C hubs and my slow descent into madness (2021)

#254

Post by trelane »

bingohbangoh wrote: post #236

I bought a DisplayLink dock for my ubuntu laptops (2015 XPS and 2021 XPS) and it doesn't really work with either. It's quite maddening. It requires a strange driver I would've preferred to avoid. I tried a strange workaround on both and neither really works; one still doesn't display through the DisplayPort or HDMI, the other doesn't work with the M.2 2280 built into the dock. \[0\]: https://github.com/AdnanHodzic/di…

DisplayLink is proprietary crap. There are apparently drivers for Mac, Windows, and ChromeOS, and a (open?) driver for the old, outdated 1.0 version. It won't work at all for anything recent.

Despite the similarity in name, it has _nothing_ to do with DisplayPort. AFAICT, does a compressed image thing over USB, like VNC. But proprietary, of course. I was also tricked into buying one by the name and was surprised when it didn't work with Linux.

Linux users should buy something that uses DisplayPort, _not_ DisplayLink. See https://www.dell.com/community/Laptops-General-Read-Only/Dem... for details on how USB/thunderbolt and DisplayPort when together.

Re: USB-C hubs and my slow descent into madness (2021)

#256

Post by rektide »

corndoge wrote: post #231
wwalexander wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d just like to chime in with the Kensington SD5700T [1]. I’ve tried a CalDigit TS3 Plus, an Anker PowerExpand 13-in-1, and the Kensington has by far been the most reliable. It doesn’t have built-in HDMI/DisplayPort out, but it’s easy to buy the appropriate cable to connect to your monitor (I recommend Club3D [2]). Especially if you’re trying to use an HDMI 2.1 or DisplayPort 1.4 display, as I’ve found most built-in…

See, that's crazy, because Sonnet "makes" an identical board. Same case too. Only difference is the logo. https://www.sonnetstore.com/products/echo-11-thunderbolt-4-d... And $40 cheaper than the Kensington branded one. So even though it's thunderbolt and it works for you - it really is the same thing TFA is talking about.

And it still costs as much as a computer.

Re: USB-C hubs and my slow descent into madness (2021)

#257

Post by rektide »

makeitdouble wrote: post #250
moritonal wrote: post #7

If you want a decent dock you have to spend a bit of money. I went through this pain before accepting the cost and buying a CalDigit Thunderbolt 4 Element Hub[1]. Run's two 4k displays at 60Hz, any peripheral and charges my laptop. So good I bought a second. 1. https://www.caldigit.com/thunderbolt-4-element-hub/

To note, “a bit of money” is 250$ on amazon right now. Two of them would buy a complete Ryzen mini-PC, which could be another way to convey how hard it must be to make a “decent” thunderbolt dock.

AMD is joining Intel in having Thunderbolt4/usb4 ports on their upcoming mobile chips. Would be great to have an io up alterntive part that has 4, 5, 6 or more ports.

Re: USB-C hubs and my slow descent into madness (2021)

#258

Post by gumby »

moffkalast wrote: post #204
moritonal wrote: post #7

If you want a decent dock you have to spend a bit of money. I went through this pain before accepting the cost and buying a CalDigit Thunderbolt 4 Element Hub[1]. Run's two 4k displays at 60Hz, any peripheral and charges my laptop. So good I bought a second. 1. https://www.caldigit.com/thunderbolt-4-element-hub/

Remind me to never buy a laptop without a healthy array of dedicated external ports. This is lunacy.

I'm not denying your application need, but I only plug in power and sometimes an external monitor. I don't think I've plugged anything else into my computer in years.

So it might be lunacy for you but it's not necessarily lunacy for others. And given the amount of market research these guys do I suspect the "never plug anything else in" crowd is pretty significant.

Re: USB-C hubs and my slow descent into madness (2021)

#259

Post by ben7799 »

This is a super junky product category. I notice plenty of people plugging the super expensive OWC and CalDigit Thunderbolt docks. These are also pretty junky, they just have big price tags.

Luckily I have not actually spent my money on these.. but we have had hundreds at work. I have had a Thunderbolt dock at my desk at work for about 4 years now, and have had one at home for 2 years now that I was able to expense. I've had both an OWC and a CalDigit Fail. My CalDigit at work failed last week after mostly sitting unused during the pandemic. IT had a rubbermaid bin full of broken ones.

I think the common thing we have is most of us have 2x 4k monitors.. one has to go into a Thunderbolt port and one goes into a DisplayPort. My desk at home only has one external monitor and seems to not generate problems. Usually one of the monitors will start to refuse to work.

The CalDigit has one set of bugs with Intel Macs and a different set of bugs with Apple Silicon IME.

Both of them have RF interference issues as well with things like Microsoft and Logitech wireless mice and keyboards.

It's all too bad cause the user experience is great when they actually work. Single cable to get everything works great.

Re: USB-C hubs and my slow descent into madness (2021)

#260

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

gumby wrote: post #258
moffkalast wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remind me to never buy a laptop without a healthy array of dedicated external ports. This is lunacy.

I'm not denying your application need, but I only plug in power and sometimes an external monitor. I don't think I've plugged anything else into my computer in years. So it might be lunacy for you but it's not necessarily lunacy for others. And given the amount of market research these guys do I suspect the "never plug anything else in" crowd is pretty significant.

I’m with you on this. I’m a FAANG software engineer who does hardware stuff too and I have a 2020 MacBook Air with 2 (two!) USB-C ports. One for charging, one for other stuff. In my two years of owning the device I have not once ever been frustrated needing the third port. I do quite often use both of the two ports, but even needing three seems to never happen in my use case.

I don’t use external monitors with that device which probably makes a difference but IMO the point still stands - I think there is a silent majority of people who don’t want or care about more ports.

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