[HN Gopher] USB-C hubs and my slow descent into madness (2021)
___________________________________________________________________
USB-C hubs and my slow descent into madness (2021)
Author : sneakymichael
Score : 1050 points
Date : 2022-04-04 20:29 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (overengineer.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (overengineer.dev)
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| I just knew that this -- like every -- article about USB-C hubs
| wouldn't mention a single USB-C hub.
|
| A hub is an accessory that turns one port into several of the
| same kind. Everyone understood this back in the USB-A days.
|
| What this article discusses are port replicators. You might wanna
| call them docks although a pedant might take issue with that.
|
| To the best of my knowledge, six freakin years after USB-C came
| to the market, there are no real USB-C hubs available. Some
| Thunderbolt hubs, but not simple USB-C.
| sandreas wrote:
| If you also need a monitor for your office tasks, try the Dell
| P2720DC. Its a Monitor including a USB-C Dock and it just works.
| jeffbee wrote:
| How much of the ethernet problems are due to these hubs and how
| much is due to ethernet autoneg just sucking? On my mac mini with
| whatever ethernet hardware they use, the link randomly negotiates
| 10, 100, full duplex, half duplex, flow control on or sometimes
| off. It's all coin tosses.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Potentially, but the problem is that now you had no choice.
| Back then, your laptop would come with a reputable (most likely
| Intel) Ethernet controller that you would use so you had no
| reason to buy an external one and bear the risk of getting a
| shitty one. Now, more and more laptops don't have an Ethernet
| controller, so you have no choice but to roll the dice and
| churn through multiple dongles until you get one with a
| controller that doesn't suck.
| Saris wrote:
| A good NIC doesn't have any of those issues. It all comes down
| to their poor choices in what ethernet IC to use.
| jeffbee wrote:
| These Macs have Broadcom NICs so I'm not sure if it's quite
| as simple as buying reputable brands.
| [deleted]
| Bud wrote:
| 100% due to the crappy hubs.
|
| I have a gigabit connection and have been using the CalDigit
| TS3+ since it came out. Zero issues, zero problems with it
| stepping down to 100 Mbps or anything else. I have GigE plugged
| in, two monitors, two large disk arrays, sound, and usually a
| couple other random things. The monitors and all peripherals
| work flawlessly, wake flawlessly from sleep, etc.
|
| Every time I test the speed, it's around 940 Mbps, which is
| about the max that a gig fiber connection can actually push to
| you. Every time.
|
| By contrast, a lot of my IT clients have tried to get by with
| the crappy cheap USB-C hubs or docks mentioned in this article,
| and without exception, they always completely suck. Eventually,
| they start listening to me and they buy a quality dock instead,
| and then their problems magically cease.
| ben7799 wrote:
| I can back you up on that the TS3+ NIC is definitely quality.
|
| But the TS3+ DisplayPort & Thunderbolt monitor support is
| flaky/buggy and breaks.
| pjsg wrote:
| All I wanted for my Macbook Pro (with 4 USB-C) was to get one
| USB-A and power passthrough. The USB-A would then get chained to
| a genuine USB-A hub.
|
| After two years, I'm now on my third hub. The second one was made
| by EUASOO and it died not being able to pass power through from
| the USB charger (it also wouldn't let the Mac boot when it was
| plugged in!). The first one (that I can't find) never really
| worked at all. The third one is branded OMARS and has survived
| maybe a month. On the plus side, it does actually let the Mac
| boot.
| tim-- wrote:
| The Dell DA310 is the best all in one USB hub that I have ever
| purchased. Works fantastic on Apple devices. Been using a number
| of them for a decent amount of time.
|
| Sure, it also uses an RTL8153, and might need the Realtek drivers
| to work (out of luck if you are on macOS 11+) but it was the
| first USB hub that I used forever, where everything just worked.
|
| I don't use it for PD, I don't trust that on any hub.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Adding my own to the list -
|
| + Belkin's thunderbolt dock - Ethernet is a mess and takes down
| my network switch when my macbook goes to sleep. This seems like
| a common issue. The fix is to "unplug ethernet when putting
| laptop to sleep".
|
| + Anker's bigger usb c dock - actually this one works for me,
| though I am using it with an XPS 15.
|
| + The spouse has a CalDigit 3. She says it has no issues.
| discopicante wrote:
| "something sold from a German company is at least an indication
| that I might get some helpful support if something goes wrong"
|
| Germany is notorious for horrible customer service (e.g. the
| customer is usually wrong). Does the author assumes that all
| German companies have the same level of service of a BMW or
| Mercedes dealership? Hint: those dealerships are in the United
| States, not Germany.
| rebuilder wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the author is German.
| G3rn0ti wrote:
| > Germany is notorious for horrible customer service
|
| Well, it's much better than its reputation. It's more a
| cultural thing. Germans are very direct and hate BS. Also many
| Germans hate to pay for convenience and aesthetics (that's why
| they do their groceries in these awful discounter shops where
| the food is presented in the card boxes used for shipping).
| That's why customer service workers (if available at all) tend
| to be more "in your face" but usually they try the best to help
| you if they can.
| holdenk wrote:
| I like the tear-down approach, I wish it was more common for
| these devices to say what chips they used.
| orheep wrote:
| I'm using a Kensington SD5700T and I have nothing but good to say
| about it.
| dwighttk wrote:
| Seems like it should be Realtek RTL8153 and my slow descent into
| madness.
| ok123456 wrote:
| I ran into a problem with one of these docks where the network
| adapter would randomly start flooding the network if it was left
| plugged in after the computer was disconnected. It didn't happen
| every time, maybe once every few months. The guy who had this
| thing would take off for the day a little before 5 and then total
| chaos by the time he was pulling away in his car.
| bingohbangoh wrote:
| 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/displaylink-debian
| trelane wrote:
| 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.
| k8sToGo wrote:
| I only made bad experience with displaylink. Now I use HDMI
| Dongle to connect directly to the GPU.
| fooey wrote:
| What I want to know is why no one makes a plain actual hub for
| USB-C
|
| Not a dock, I don't want video, I don't want ethernet, I don't
| want an sdcard reader, I don't need switching
|
| All I want is a powered 1 to many USB-C hub. Maybe my google-fu
| is failing me, but I can't find this category of product and I
| don't know why.
| culopatin wrote:
| I just bought a pluggable usb4 hub. Only USBs. 3
| thunderbolt/usb4c and 1 usbA3.1
| cptnapalm wrote:
| Anyone know if a USB-C monitor will come up under loginctl as
| master-of-seat?
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| Ethernet on powered USB-C hubs has its own madness unfortunately:
| https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2020/7/6/usb-c-network-hubs/
| 9oliYQjP wrote:
| For macOS at least, the cause of this is the ECM driver that is
| used for the Realtek 8153. If you're lucky enough to find a
| device that has the Realtek 8156 chipset, which I believe the
| CalDigit TS4 uses, macOS will use the NCM driver and you'll be
| totally fine. ECM is a more primitive USB ethernet protocol and
| NCM is a more advanced one. The difference is similar to UASP
| vs BOT mode for USB external storage.
| jmyeet wrote:
| I've gone through a number of Thunderbolt docks over the last few
| years. I tend to prefer docks to hubs because you tend to use
| your laptop at several fixed positions, each of which might have
| 1 or more monitors, a network cable, accessories (eg keyboard,
| mouse, camera) and so on. It's easier to just plug in one cable
| from the dock to the Macbook that'll do everything including
| power it.
|
| A good example of this is the Caldigit TS4 [1]. All the ports you
| could possibly want. Here's what I've learned.
|
| First and foremost, you'll be surprised at how many issues come
| down to a given cable being bad. It's gotten to the point that
| whenever I buy any sort of cable I typically buy 2 or even 3 at
| the same time because I assume 1 will be bad or will go bad.
|
| Second, also to do with cables, don't use any cable to connect
| from your dock to your laptop longer than a foot. These cables
| that can take power and full bandwidth for displays and
| accesories are the most technically demanding. Keep them as short
| as possible. And again, have spares.
|
| Third, while I'm a traditionalist and like a wired connection
| (and thus an Ethernet port), it's really optional now,
| particularly at home where you have some control over the
| network. Like I can get easily get 500+ Mbps over Wifi at home.
| This of course assumes a sufficient Internet connection but if
| you don't have that then Ehternet is even less necessary.
|
| If you have flickering display in particular, your first instinct
| should be to blame the cable.
|
| [1]: https://www.caldigit.com/thunderbolt-station-4/
| j_crick wrote:
| > All the ports you could possibly want.
|
| No HDMI.
| jmyeet wrote:
| True. Personally, I never use HDMI but YMMV. You can of
| course use a USB-C to HDMI cable however.
| j_crick wrote:
| Ah, of course, but _dongles_ >:
| stormbrew wrote:
| they said a usbc to hdmi cable, not a dongle. I dunno why
| people are still so stuck on buying dongles+cables as if
| that's the only way to do things.
| shitlord wrote:
| I also prefer docks to hubs, for the same reasons you
| mentioned. There are still some pretty big gaps which need to
| be addressed before we can use a single cable for everything.
|
| First, Mac OS still doesn't support DisplayPort MST. If you
| have two or more non-Thunderbolt monitors, you'll need to use
| more than one port.
|
| Second, many companies require their employees to use tokens
| such as Yubikeys, which are USB devices plugged into a laptop
| operating on human touch. Even if you dock your laptop, you
| will need to keep it within arm's reach so you can touch the
| Yubikey. You could remove the Yubikey from the laptop and plug
| it into your dock, but that defeats the purpose of docking.
|
| Ultimately, I just want more desk space, and I consider both
| the dock and the laptop to be clutter.
| ubercow13 wrote:
| >If you have two or more non-Thunderbolt monitors, you'll
| need to use more than one port
|
| Is this still true with TB4? TB4 docks can have 3 downstream
| Thunderbolt ports and afaik each of them can power a single
| DisplayPort display without MST being involved, and without
| the display having to be a 'Thunderbolt' display, which I
| think just meant that they had a TB3 hub in to allow
| daisychaining.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _If you have flickering display in particular, your first
| instinct should be to blame the cable._
|
| Any recommendations? I'm very happy with Monoprice's TB cables
| (https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=24721), which start at
| $27 but are a _lot_ cheaper than Apple 's.
| AdamJacobMuller wrote:
| When I was having major issues with my first 5K displays I
| bought a few of the CalDigit cables
| (https://www.caldigit.com/thunderbolt-4-usb-4-cable/).
|
| Not cheap, but, they work great.
| evilduck wrote:
| Hmm, so out of curiosity I looked up both, Apple's are
| actually cheaper per centimeter than MP, but don't sell
| shorter overall cheaper options if that's what you can use.
| jmyeet wrote:
| So for things like iPhone cables, I just buy whatever nylon-
| braided cable Anker is selling now. I've been using Anker
| cables for years now and they've been reliable.
|
| But for things like TB and DP cables, I don't have any
| particular brand recommendations. I'm not sure it matters. I
| just find something with a good rating on Amazon and buy 2 of
| them. Whatever gets labelled as Amazon Basics has thus far
| seemingly worked well enough.
| fatnoah wrote:
| I hear you on the cable. Even with the dock I got working, I
| was still banging my head against the wall for a bit until I
| tried a different Thunderbolt cable.
| WaxProlix wrote:
| I've had some mediocre luck with USBC cables, paying premium
| for stuff that has the same below-spec performance as the bulk
| I got from monoprice a few years ago at a fraction of the cost.
| How do you evaluate 'nice' cables before shelling out money for
| garbage?
| HNHatesUsers wrote:
| btgeekboy wrote:
| I mostly agree with this, but not necessarily the part about
| the Ethernet connection. If you do a significant number of
| meetings with video conferencing, you'll be much better off
| with a wired connection where the latency and jitter are both
| lower than over the typical WiFi. It's one of the easiest
| things you can do to improve how your face and voice appear to
| your colleagues.
| [deleted]
| synicalx wrote:
| FWIW, I've been using a Samsung S65U monitor which has a built in
| USB hub, Ethernet, audio out and connects downstream via USB-C
| with something like 90w power delivery (it might be 65w, can't
| remember). So far after a couple of months it's been absolutely
| flawless with Macbooks and Windows laptops and in it's "high
| resolution display" mode I can get 100hz even over USB-C. It does
| only have 3 USB ports and plugging any kind of USB-A hub or port
| multiplier in seems to freak it out a bit, so as far as I can
| tell you're stuck with the 3 ports it comes with.
|
| LG and Dell also make similar USB-C hub type monitors as well, in
| a few different sizes but AFAIK none of Ethernet ports on them if
| that's important to you.
| johnatwork wrote:
| Ever since my work has issued me a USB-C MacBook, I've gone
| through 4! Hubs.
|
| First was a Satechi, which overheated and broke just past a year
| which was the warranty period. I left a bad review on Amazon, and
| they replaced it. That one broke... just past a year.
|
| Work then gave me another brand that I forget, and those too
| lasted only a year each or less.
|
| I've finally settled on having two Anker Hubs and splitting the
| amount of cables going into each.
| EricE wrote:
| macsales.com
|
| If you just want stuff that will work and be supported I just go
| there.
| someotherperson wrote:
| The whole time I was reading this I was hoping that the author
| would have found something good at the end. This is unfortunate.
|
| I had the same initial hub as the author, and like the author, it
| died. I think it was branded UGreen or something. I've currently
| got a Baesus. Likely it's all the same trash.
|
| I had a Dell USB-C dock last year which worked quite well, but
| it's a chunky thing that isn't great for travelling.
|
| I wish there was a similar guide that ends with finding a product
| that actually performs. It would be great to see Apple or
| something try to address this issue without having to buy three
| dongles.
| herpderperator wrote:
| I've used Satechi (a company in San Diego, CA) without complaints
| - every port I've needed: https://satechi.net/products/type-c-
| multi-port-adapter-with-...
| shellfishgene wrote:
| You didn't read the article, did you?
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Shitty USB-C is incredible. I have some docks/SD-card reader
| devices that somehow only work when plugged in with side A facing
| up despite the port allowing plugging in either way.
| faaarmer wrote:
| That's because they cheap out and only wire up one side
| (apparently). I have a few like that too.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| There's also single side failure modes of some type. I have
| devices that work on both sides for months.. until they
| don't.
| c_o_n_v_e_x wrote:
| Thunderbolt based products should almost always be better than
| USB. TB controllers are higher cost and there is a certification
| process for TB based products. One of the key values of TB is
| providing a consistent product that just works with other TB
| products. The downside of TB is that because of the higher costs,
| fewer manufacturers build TB based products.
|
| USB and the ecosystem is a complete mess. The naming system is
| horrific (and it keeps changing retroactively). You've got
| different connector types with different revisions. Controllers
| and products that are selective on what part of the "standards"
| they will comply with. The aftermarket cable industry is shady.
| On top of all that, now you're adding in different power delivery
| levels.
| silon42 wrote:
| That's why I am currently on a minimalistic (almost passive)
| USB-C dock... it has PD 65W passthrough, DisplayPort
| passthrough and USB 2.0 + 100Mbit ethernet (those are the
| limitations). like this, but DP only (was cheaper, but
| currently unavailable): https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Matters-
| Multiport-Adapter-Display...
| eqvinox wrote:
| > Ah, so it's a Realtek RTL8153! I always found Intel NICs to be
| way more reliable and stable, but okay, that's a reasonably
| popular chip.
|
| Intel doesn't make USB ethernet controllers, they only do PCIe.
| Realtek has a near monopoly on USB Ethernet, the only other
| supplier I can think of is SMSC/Microchip LAN7500, and I'm not
| sure it's any better.
|
| > There's also a second USB hub, but only a 2.0 one, same vendor,
| but 0x2817 as the product ID. That slower hub was used for the SD
| and microSD card reader.
|
| That's the same hub, USB 3.0 just bolts on to USB 2.0 additively
| & the USB 2.0 world exists in parallel. Both hubs are contained
| in the same physical chip.
| baybal2 wrote:
| danieldk wrote:
| _the only other supplier I can think of is SMSC /Microchip
| LAN7500_
|
| And ASIX.
| dervjd wrote:
| If you're purchasing something to use permanently at your desk,
| it's worth spending more for a Thunderbolt dock. Most USB-C hubs
| are total crap.
|
| You'll get far faster transfer speeds, more ports, charging (and
| at full speed), proper display output (dual 4K/60hz) and better
| components/reliability. The CalDigit TS3 Plus[1] is what I've
| used for several years - first with a 2019 Intel MBP and now with
| my new 2021 M1 Pro MBP. It's pricey compared to a USB-C dongle,
| but rock solid.
|
| [1]: https://amzn.to/38sFDZk
| Marsymars wrote:
| I suspect the difference is more between manufacturers than
| between USB-C/Thunderbolt. I bought the old CalDigit USB-C dock
| years ago for my 2016 rMacBook (no Thunderbolt support), and
| it's still working fine today with my M1 MBA.
| SnowflakeOnIce wrote:
| I went through 2 CalDigit TS3 docks previously, and returned
| both of them. They had a good number of ports and seemed
| reliable for the few weeks I had them. But both of them had
| audibly noisy capacitors, resulting in a tinnitus-like 16KHz
| tone that would get louder when moving the mouse or when
| connecting an external monitor to the dock.
| nerdawson wrote:
| What did you replace it with? Having the same problem with
| mine and looking for an alternative.
| danieldk wrote:
| We have three StarTech docks since November or December. No
| coil whine so far, except for the Realtek NIC (which works
| out-of-the-box on Macs, but is meh otherwise), we didn't
| have any issues with it.
|
| https://www.startech.com/en-eu/cards-adapters/tb3cdk2dpue
| aenis wrote:
| I bought two identical 3x 4k docks from Startech, and
| used them for M1 and M1 Max macbooks. One of them
| developed a very loud coil whine. No other problems, but
| it was too loud to be used alongside a dead silent
| laptop. The other is fine.
|
| Docks are always a hit or miss thing. I had Dell docks
| before, also ~350 eur or so, and they consistently failed
| to wake up the external screens on resume from sleep.
| Same screens worked just fine on the Startech.
| torginus wrote:
| I think that Thunderbolt is not a particularly good solution
| for anything. You get 99% of the things it can do in USB-C, and
| the things that it can't either don't work on Apple machines
| (eGPU) or are needlessly high performance (I'm fine with my
| external SSDs being limited to just a couple 100 MB/s).
|
| In exchange you get a lot more expensive hubs, stiff, expensive
| cables, and a much more limited computer compatibility.
| paisawalla wrote:
| Their entire product line seems to be "currently unavailable"
| on Amazon.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Looks like they hope to be back in stock late this month.
| They've got some availability notes on their website:
| https://www.caldigit.com/an-update-on-ts4-availability/
|
| I imagine they're being hit by the chip shortage that
| impacted so many other companies. I'm still waiting on a
| Raspberry Pi, myself.
| LeanderK wrote:
| I have an old macbook but I really like the idea to have a single
| cable connected to a hub where everything plugs in and your
| laptop charges. I just wonder whether the usb-c style connector
| really is suitable for it? It seems like it could disconnect
| easily and what about the wear?
| Gareth321 wrote:
| I've used a USB-C hub for years. It's great. One cable. No wear
| issues. Doesn't not disconnect without a tug. It's less robust
| than magsafe, so don't put the cable somewhere you're likely to
| trip over it.
| porbelm wrote:
| How much do you move the laptop when it's plugged in to the
| dock? Would it not usually be stationary near the dock with its
| own keeb and mouse?
| physhster wrote:
| I have one of those Anker x-in-one hubs and it works well, minus
| the Ethernet which it capped at 300Mbps due to [checks notes] a
| USB 2.0 interconnection.
|
| Why?!? I ended up getting a separate sub $20 USB-C to Ethernet
| adapter from a random Amazon brand called Uni. Get full gig,
| every time despite it having a Realtek 8153 chip in it. So, there
| might be more to it.
| thedougd wrote:
| Many laptops can't handle more than USB 2.0 when outputting
| display over the same port. Those that can need a certain
| protocol (too lazy to look up). There's a better protocol that
| allows both, but now you're in the $100+ range of hub/docks
| that can handle it.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| I'd guess that this might be related to USB A (2.0) being
| only rated for 2.5 W (up to 7.5 W for the "Battery Charging"
| specification), while USB C needs to support at least 15 W
| (up to 240 W) ?
| physhster wrote:
| That would be Thunderbolt 3 or 4, I guess?
| avidiax wrote:
| You are thinking about USB-C Alt Mode, which is a way for
| displayport to go over USB-C.
|
| To get 4k60 + USB3.1, you either need USB-C Alt Mode with
| DP1.4+ (supported by almost zero monitors), or Thunderbolt-3
| (supported by fantastically expensive monitors).
|
| It's much more economical to live with USB2.0 for your
| keyboards and mice, and get a separate USB3.1 hub if you need
| that.
|
| https://www.bigmessowires.com/2019/05/19/explaining-4k-60hz-.
| ..
| testingtestin wrote:
| Apple multiport dock supports 4k/60 hdmi and usb 3.0
| somehow, but only on 2019 and newer macbook and ipad
| models.
| mst wrote:
| There's a comment only visible via showdead from somebody who
| claims to be working in China and that the 8153 is actually
| fine except most of their employers' competitors mess up
| powering it properly, and it's a cheap enough chip to not be
| particularly happy when that happens.
|
| I have no means of verifying this, but it seems at least a
| plausible hypothesis.
| physhster wrote:
| I'm totally buying this. It's 2022, I am pretty sure Realtek
| knows how to make a reliable gigabitEthernet chip, and at the
| same time it's also possible that OEMs cut corners in power
| design.
| codeulike wrote:
| "What Shopping On Amazon Feels Like"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQpxAvjD_30
|
| I saw this a few months ago and it really lays bare a lot of the
| crazy stuff we've just got used to with amazon
| norman784 wrote:
| What I'm looking is for a good TB4 KVM, I have 2 Macs (work and
| personal) and then I have a gaming rig, my current setup is a
| mess, lots of cables here and there (cable management is so hard
| with a standing desk).
|
| The last time I search for a product like this were only TB3
| available. I'm interested in solutions that worked for you in
| this kind of scenarios.
| Saris wrote:
| I feel like if you need ethernet, hdmi, DP, etc you should buy a
| laptop that has those ports on it in the first place.
| peepop6 wrote:
| My dream laptop is something with the performance of the M1 but
| with the modularity and freedom of old ThinkPads.
|
| I'm just hoping that by the time I stop using this M1 laptop
| there will be alternatives because there's really nothing I
| like about Apple other than their SoC.
| gnicholas wrote:
| My MBP (2017 no-TB) runs significantly hotter when plugged into
| my Anker dock and powering my Samsung 1080p display. The laptop
| is closed in this configuration, so it's only running one display
| either way. But it's 10-15degC warmer when plugged.
|
| It's possible this is because the closed lid keeps heat in. I've
| also heard that using any external display requires the laptop to
| use its discrete GPU, and this generates additional heat.
|
| Either way, it's pretty annoying because the laptop starts
| throttling itself with very modest usage.
| dml2135 wrote:
| Does anyone know if it's possible to drive three HD/QHD monitors
| via a single thunderbolt port on an M1 Mac, and if any docks
| exist that would support this use case?
|
| Many of these docks and Apple support documents say they support
| dual displays at 4K resolutions, but it's difficult-to-impossible
| to find information on # of displays supported at lower
| resolutions.
| matthew-wegner wrote:
| The short answer is no, unfortunately. There is a limit of two
| monitors per Thunderbolt port. My understanding is that this
| limitation lives somewhere at the DisplayPort spec level, but I
| don't know the specifics.
|
| The longer answer is that you might be able to, depending on
| resolution/refresh. This will need _both_ hardware and software
| for "DisplayLink". I've never kicked the tires on this setup,
| but I believe it's basically setting up a single frame buffer
| that will span two physical devices.
|
| Hardware: https://www.sonnettech.com/product/m1-mac-dual-
| displayport-a...
|
| Software: https://www.synaptics.com/products/displaylink-
| graphics/down...
|
| IMO it isn't very viable, especially once you're past 60hz HD
| resolutions, and also because the macOS drivers/software
| sometimes lag behind major OS releases or even point releases.
|
| I hang a 4k@144hz and _two_ 1440p@144hz screens off an M1 Max.
| It 's basically one monitor per cable at that point (docking is
| two Thunderbolt + HDMI). One TB cable goes to a CalDigit TS3+
| for power, USB accessories, and one of the 1440p monitors. The
| other goes straight to the 4k monitor.
| dml2135 wrote:
| This is helpful and confirms my suspicions.
|
| One question to clarify your setup -- So the 4k monitor is
| connected directly to your mac with a thunderbolt cable, one
| of the QHD monitors is connected directly to your mac through
| HDMI, and the second QHD monitor is connected through the
| CalDigit dock?
|
| If you don't mind, can I ask why not just connect both QHD
| monitors through the CalDigit dock?
| noobee wrote:
| I am using the USB-C 4K with an M1 Mac Pro (Pro CPU), driving 2
| _4k@60Hz (via DP) and 1_ 4k@30Hz (via HDMI):
| https://plugable.com/collections/docking-stations/3x-display...
| snvzz wrote:
| This seems ripe for some Maker to design a reliable alternative
| as OSHW.
|
| I'd buy it in an eyeblink, from whatever shop the author prefers
| me to use.
| segfaultbuserr wrote:
| > _At this point, I don't really know what to say. It honestly
| feels like no matter what you buy, you get more or less the same
| hardware,_ _and you're most likely getting a heavily overpriced
| product just because some company printed their logo on it.
| [...]_ _However, I can't help but feel a little bit cheated by
| companies just buying off-the-shelf products, slightly modifying
| the case layout, and then quadruple the price because it's_
| _"from a reputable company"._
|
| It's worth mentioning that buying the same hardware from a
| reputable company is not always pointless. At USB 3's data rate,
| power and signal integrity are a serious concern, stability of
| the hardware is often sensitive to PCB layout. There are numerous
| pitfalls to shoot yourself in the foot and they are often not
| obvious at all. Even with exactly the same chip, or even the same
| circuit connections, a tiny layout change can be a life-or-death
| issue.
|
| For example, any change to the data line geometry, such as a
| connector or capacitor soldering pad, introduces unwanted
| impedance discontinuities to the transmission line and degrades
| signal integrity. The best design carefully adds or removes
| copper around these discontinuities to compensate for the
| impedance change, on the other hand, it may not be a problem if
| you are lucky. Nevertheless, to truly ensure the design is not
| just borderline working but has guaranteed stability, it must be
| verified by testing, using Time Domain Reflectometer, Vector
| Network Analyzer, and/or inspecting the actual signal on an
| oscilloscope using the eye diagram.
|
| Similarly, an incorrectly-bypassed power supply may cause random
| crashes. Such a bad power supply is easily created. For example,
| if two capacitor values are combined, at some frequency, the
| parasitic inductance of the first capacitor resonates with the
| second capacitor, forming a parallel LC circuit and can create a
| huge spike in the power supply impedance. If this impedance peak
| happens to be close the operating frequency of a subcircuit, it
| creates a serious noise problem. A good design would take these
| into consideration and ensure the power supply impedance is
| always below the specified target impedance throughout the
| frequency spectrum. Again, it may not be a problem if you are
| lucky, but only proper testing can confirm that.
|
| A reputable company is more likely to validate the design, run a
| full compliance test, and pass the product certification before
| start selling this device. Meanwhile a no-name vendor sells
| whatever that powers on, often without regards to signal
| integrity, especially when you consider that an oscilloscope
| capable for testing USB 3.2's eye diagrams need a 10 GHz+ real-
| time bandwidth and costs up to $10,000. I'm not saying that
| buying from a reputable company is foolproof - it is not, you see
| sloppy work from time to time, but the chance of getting a tested
| system is higher.
| whazor wrote:
| Important to know is that USB4 in alternate mode can now do
| DisplayPort 2.0 which is up to 80Gbit/s. Whereas Thunderbolt 4
| itself only does 40Gbit/s. So my recommendation is using one dock
| for charging, Ethernet, USB. Then using a second cable in DP 2.0
| mode for your monitor(s). The only problem is that with charging
| it can make docks also quite flakey.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I wonder how much e-waste this USB-C bullshit idea generated.
| It's not even a one-off, "early adopter" problem, considering
| that even _now_ it 's hard to buy something that actually works
| and you have to churn through many attempts before getting lucky.
|
| In contrast, I can't remember the last time I bought a USB-A,
| HDMI or Ethernet cable/peripheral that didn't work, partly
| because those specs are self-contained and simple enough that
| even the cheapest manufacturer will typically do a good enough
| job.
| icelancer wrote:
| Yeah, a perfect example are all the people in this thread
| recommending Thunderbolt devices while a bunch of us sit here
| and type away on our Ryzen or Threadripper powered machines.
|
| USB-C has been such a massive disappointment.
| mey wrote:
| ASUS has Thunderbolt 4 motherboards for Ryzen.
|
| https://www.asus.com/ProArt/Motherboards-Home/
| icelancer wrote:
| Unfortunately I've never really needed USB-C for my
| desktops/servers - primarily my laptops.
| danieldk wrote:
| I have a laptop that is powerful as a Ryzen 5x00, which is
| quiet and uses very little power. I can take it with me in my
| backpack and hook it up to my three workspaces by plugging
| one Thunderbolt over USB-C cable. (I use a Startech
| Thunderbolt Dock, which hasn't had any issues, except the
| dislikable Realtek NIC.)
|
| I don't want to go back to the workstation tower life.
| Unfortunately, I still have to keep around a Ryzen machine
| for CUDA. But it is loud (even with Noctua fans), eats large
| amounts of power, and is completely non-portable.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| The real disappointment is Intel who have kept an iron grip
| on Thunderbolt for way over a decade and prevented everyone
| from distributing Thunderbolt without an Intel CPU _for no
| technical reason at all_.
| oneplane wrote:
| Ironically, my older USB-A (2.0 and 1.1), HDMI and Ethernet
| cables and hubs all work fine, but every time I buy a new
| version (consumer/retail) there is always something wrong with
| them.
|
| Bought a USB-A hub because I needed a few extra ports for low
| speed devices; didn't work... turns out all the D+ and D- lines
| had a very high resistance to the point there the USB protocol
| just wouldn't work. HDMI cable, didn't work for anything beyond
| 720p. Ethernet cable, didn't work beyond 100Mbit, turned out to
| be a crappy CCS/CCA cable, said copper on the packaging, had
| copper in the connectors. Cutting the cable showed it was just
| a clad cable and the ends were dipped so you can't see it in
| the connector.
|
| And returning them, the replacements almost always had the same
| issue because it was a bad design in the first place and you
| just had to get lucky that you got the "least broken" one in
| the batch. It wasn't a price point thing either, all of them
| are just crap until you get to the "we cannot afford to shit on
| our brand name" products.
| torginus wrote:
| Once you go over 1080p, I found that most (>50%) HDMI cables
| that advertise HDMI 2.0 (or even 2.1) either do not work at
| all, or have constant cutouts at 4K@60. Also I found that there
| is no correlation between how nice cables look, how expensive
| they are and how well they work.
|
| The only HDMI cables that I had 100% success with, were the
| ones that came bundled with A/V equipment, even if some of them
| look like bottom shelf stuff.
| 542458 wrote:
| USB-A: there are so many crap usb-A cables around that either
| a) don't charge b) don't reliably send data or c) work, but
| with massive voltage drops leading to very slow charging.
|
| HDMI: HDMI will silently degrade to lower versions of the spec
| over bad connections, so it might just be that the bad cables
| are invisible.
| moduspol wrote:
| I still get the same issue with HDMI cables when you want to do
| more than 4K (like 4K60 4:4:4) with a cable that's more than
| half a meter long. Cable length apparently significantly
| impacts throughput.
|
| It's even worse on Amazon when a seller will list multiple
| lengths of the same cable, as there'll be reviews about how
| this works great for (e.g.) Dolby Vision on an Apple TV 4K, but
| that was for the short cable. That doesn't imply the longer
| version of the same cable will work for the same application.
| npunt wrote:
| Big picture, USB-C is set to considerably reduce ewaste given
| that more and more consumer electronics products are
| standardizing on it as a charging solution, eliminating custom
| chargers and letting manufacturers get away with not including
| a charger. This is likely to be accelerated by regulations in
| the EU. The last time we had this level of standardization was
| probably the AA battery. Not saying things are perfect (because
| they obviously aren't) but computers - and especially finicky
| docks and high performance cables - are just one part of a much
| much bigger market for USB-C.
| toastal wrote:
| Meanwhile, so many USB-C hubs don't actually have any USB-C
| ports despite the writing on the wall and it only being a
| matter of time.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "Big picture, USB-C is set to considerably reduce ewaste"
|
| In 20 years once they atoned fir the dongle sins, I have 6
| usbC adapters around the house
| HNHatesUsers wrote:
| manicdee wrote:
| One piece of e waste I had was an entire MacBook Air which was
| bricked by a USB-C hub with power delivery which Dane highly
| recommended. Apple fixed that problem by updating their
| firmware. Apparently even Apple has trouble with USB-C.
| tym0 wrote:
| Reminds me of my unfruitful quest to find a USB 3 Switch (A KVM
| without video) without awful reviews on Amazon. I'm still
| searching...
| legitster wrote:
| I have never trusted one of these hubs to pass power through
| after feeling how hot mine got. That seems to have prolonged the
| life on mine.
|
| The decision of Amazon to allow foreign sellers directly on their
| platform really degraded the quality of their offerings overall.
| While I understand they had to to stay competitive with other
| retailers, the race to the bottom on some of these offerings is
| making me care about brand names more than I ever expected to.
| theonething wrote:
| My order history says I ordered one of these in 2018
|
| https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074DRW84M
|
| It worked flawlessly so when I needed another two years later I
| didn't hesitate.
|
| I'm using both right now to power my MBP (2018 13"), connect some
| peripherals and two external displays. Has been working
| flawlessly for years. I took it for granted. From this article
| and comments, looks like I got really lucky.
|
| Looks like they don't make them anymore. I should have picked up
| a few more.
| thedougd wrote:
| I have found that Macs are far less tolerant of USB-C devices
| than other machines. I have crap dongles that work with PCs,
| Chromebooks, even Chromecast and Nintendo's, but not correctly
| with a Mac. I've seen the same with Intel and M1 Macs.
| beilabs wrote:
| I went a different way and purchased a 24" monitor which has the
| hub built in. Support for the standard display ports, USB / USBC
| and ethernet. I have one single USBC cable connecting to the
| laptop for power, ethernet and everything else. Seems like this
| is the way forward for me at least.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| These are surprisingly hard to find. Not impossible, there just
| don't seem to be a lot of them so quality options are in short
| supply. I had a dell one for a few years I _loved_. 2x USB3.0
| ports in the back hosting 2x external HDD's, power for my
| computer, and my monitor, all through one USB-C port. It was
| brilliant. Damn thing only lasted about 2.5-3yrs though. I was
| bummed to see it go.
| Roritharr wrote:
| 7 years ago I wrote a comment, dismayed about the coming USB-C
| insanity and was made fun of.
|
| Here we are.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9645013
| tempnow987 wrote:
| Haha... That's pretty perfect. And after 7 years I'm also still
| playing with stuff.
|
| I got a hub with an external power connector that plugs into
| wall and it charges my iphone at trickle charger rates.
|
| Meanwhile my "crappy" apple charger seems to blast my iphone up
| in no time.
|
| One cost me MORE (the hub/dock).
| smoldesu wrote:
| This just in! Accessory designed for use with phone works
| well with phone, while off-the-shelf generic accessory does
| not. More at 11.
| djur wrote:
| The problem here isn't related to the standardized port and
| incompatibility between devices, though, is it? It's a matter
| of the functionality of the hardware in the peripheral, which
| has been an issue with USB hubs forever. Your comment is all
| about device compatibility, not devices being cheap and shitty.
| Roritharr wrote:
| One begets the other is my implied argument, if the standard
| wouldn't be this wide and allow for so much missing
| functionality, devices being this cheap and shitty would
| stick out more. Overall prices would be higher, but the
| quality per device would increase, even if just for economy
| of scale reasons.
|
| How many bad USB 2 Hubs did you have to deal with?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| What missing functionality?
|
| When chips die, that's not something the standard could
| affect.
|
| When a USB to Ethernet converter happens to be on the same
| circuit board as an actual hub, the USB standard isn't
| responsible for the Ethernet part.
|
| The screen connections are pretty much just passthrough.
| That's the narrowest you can get.
|
| And it doesn't sound like the USB ports on the hubs had any
| problems.
|
| If you split things up by standard, you'd have a USB hub
| that always works, with a flaky ethernet converter plugged
| in one port and a flaky HDMI converter plugged in another
| port.
| djur wrote:
| This has nothing to do with USB 3 or USB-C, though. The
| same shortcomings were true of previous USB standards, it
| just was rarely feasible to run so many different
| peripherals through a single hub.
| spicybright wrote:
| See you again in 7 years! :(
| post_break wrote:
| I'm currently using a UNI usb C hub that has worked flawlessly. I
| think it's bespoke because the port layout is nothing like all
| the clones and the reviews seem to show it's not flaky.
| lliamander wrote:
| Does there exist a docking station that supports 2 laptops, and
| can switch between them?
| girvo wrote:
| I've been through all this as well.
|
| I gave up and spent a couple hundred dollars on an ALogic dual-
| thunderbolt connection dock. Two wires, not one, but perfect for
| my MacBook. It's been flawless, even after a year (most of the
| cheap docks I used died after 6 months).
|
| From what others I've spoken to, and myself have worked out, the
| only "solution" is to spend hundreds of dollars on the high end
| ones. They seem to be far more reliable (and have better support
| if something does go wrong).
|
| CalDigit is what most have moved to. My ALogic one is still
| kicking, so I'll stick with it for now.
| hbossy wrote:
| I just checked the official Thinkpad USB-C dock model 40a9 and
| it's using the same rtl8153b chip.
| mdavidn wrote:
| I tossed one of those Satechi adapters because it crashed my home
| network whenever I unplugged the laptop. Apparently its ethernet
| port would repeat any packets received, creating a network loop.
| (!!) Their tech support did not seem concerned and suggested I
| unplug power when not in use. So much for one plug.
|
| I embraced the two-plug paradigm and now use an Anker USB-C
| adapter _without_ power pass-through. It has worked well with
| both Windows and Mac laptops. Admittedly, I would not notice if
| ethernet capped at 300 Mbps.
| loudthing wrote:
| Interesting how slow USB-C adoption has been so far, which is a
| shame because the connector and concept are a great standard, but
| the implementation of various busses (Thunderbolt, PCIExpress),
| video adapters (Displayport, HDMI 2, 2.1), USB versions (trying
| to be inclusive of USB 1 through 3 and all its flavors) is
| maddeningly complex, and unappealing to the typical consumer.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| This thread is why I use a separate laptop and desktop.
| aivisol wrote:
| > I'm slightly concerned about the fact that some of the products
| use electrolytic capacitors. Those hubs get pretty warm, even if
| you're not routing your laptop's power through the hub, and
| electrolytic capacitors don't like warm environments, and that'll
| significantly shorten their life. However, that's probably
| negligible, since lots of resistors are also designed just barely
| around their load ratings, all the chips run amazingly hot, ...
| it just feels like another product family intended to be used
| barely one year until it dies, just to end up in the landfill.
|
| Drying out of electrolytic capacitors is a single largest cause
| of failure of electronic devices these days (apart from physical
| damage). My friend is in the business of restoring vintage tape
| recorders and audio amplifiers (from 80s and 90s) and what he
| does is he just replaces all electrolytes without even looking at
| them. This usually brings these machines back to life
| immediately. Resistors usually can handle the heat for extended
| periods of time: even if some of them bear marks of overheating,
| they are mostly fine.
| dpezet wrote:
| > he just replaces all electrolytes without even looking at
| them.
|
| He must burn himself a lot. It's hard enough to solder
| components when you are looking at them.
| [deleted]
| aivisol wrote:
| without testing them I meant. But no, it is NOT hard to
| solder them when you ARE looking at them. Just need some
| practice.
| irth wrote:
| I wonder what's inside the Pine64 docks.
|
| https://pine64.com/product/pinebook-pro-usb-c-docking-deck/
|
| I'm currently using the PinePhone USB-C dock with my Macbook but
| I don't think it has Gigabit ethernet, but I don't have a cable
| wired up to my room still so I mainly use it for HDMI and USB
| type A ports.
| Galaxeblaffer wrote:
| This runs much much deeper than just USB-C hubs. Me and a couple
| of friends dabbled in getting a product produced in China 10
| years ago and while investigating competition and really digging
| deep into aliexpress, alibaba etc. We found out that almost every
| single brand who doesn't own their own production is like this,
| and that's almost every single one. To name a few this same thing
| is true for Golf balls, pillows, every imaginable electronic
| peripherals, clothing, tools. We got to a point where my
| colleague was able to sniff down the original
| product/manufacturer for every single product we researched. Is
| this good or bad? idk, all i know is that this is how the world
| works these days..
| swaranga wrote:
| I have long searched for a configuration (Linux laptop + docking
| station) that can drive a triple monitor setup. Ideally all three
| at 4K@60 Hz but I might settle for one of them being QHD (2560 x
| 1440). Why isn't there any confirmed options? Or is that the
| limitations of Thunderbolt?
| rocqua wrote:
| I think that might be passed the capabilities of what
| DisplayPort can push, so it would be passed what USB-3 alt-mode
| can do, because that uses DisplayPort. I am not sure if
| thunderbolt adds extra capabilities here.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| That does not seems feasible, e.g. see
|
| https://www.datapro.net/techinfo/thunderbolt_info.html#q3
|
| > Thunderbolt 3 allows the connection of two 4K monitors, one
| 5K, or one 4K at 120 Hz per port. Thunderbolt 4 supports the
| same number of displays as Thunderbolt 3, while adding support
| for resolutions up to 8K.
|
| So bandwithwise you probably need at least thunderbolt 4 (8k=4*
| 4k) and then not at 120Hz. Also even if the docking station can
| manage this, it is not clear whether your graphics card is able
| to, e.g. see
|
| https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000...
|
| What might be possible is one docking station with two 4k@60Hz
| screens (many options) and then connecting a third screen to
| the laptop's HDMI port (if it has one).
| nwallin wrote:
| Also note that if you have a laptop that supports Thunderbolt,
| you need a docking station that supports Thunderbolt. If you have
| a laptop that supports Alternate Video Mode, you need a docking
| station that supports Alternate Video Mode. AFAIK no laptop
| supports both modes, and very, very few docking station supports
| both. (you'll usually get reduced features if you have a
| mismatch; for instance, you'll get just one monitor, or two
| monitors at low resolution, or no video out at all, just the
| additional USB/ethernet ports)
|
| My work laptop has Thunderbolt, my personal laptop does not. So
| this is an issue for me. I have a Plugable TBT-UDZ, which is one
| of relatively few docking stations that supports both. I can
| therefore use two 2560x1440 60Hz displays through either laptop.
|
| This isn't without issue. My work PC (Windows) will every other
| week or so BSOD when connected to it, but, well, it's Windows. My
| personal personal computer (linux) will not crash, but every
| other week or so will simply refuse to recognize the docking
| station. So I have to unplug the docking station and plug it back
| in. It's annoying, but not the end of the world. I believe these
| two issues are the same issue, but I haven't bothered to confirm
| that. I don't have a Mac to try it on.
|
| https://plugable.com/products/tbt3-udz
| danieldk wrote:
| _Also note that if you have a laptop that supports Thunderbolt,
| you need a docking station that supports Thunderbolt. If you
| have a laptop that supports Alternate Video Mode, you need a
| docking station that supports Alternate Video Mode. AFAIK no
| laptop supports both modes, and very, very few docking station
| supports both._
|
| As far as I understand, Thunderbolt 3 needs to support 4x PCI
| Express 3.0, DisplayPort 1.2, and USB 3.1 Gen 2 [1] (slides 8,
| 10-15). And Intel advertises that their Thunderbolt 3
| controllers can switch to DisplayPort-only alt-mode [1].
|
| All the Thunderbolt 3/4 Macs that I have had (Intel and M1)
| definitely supported DP alt-mode (I hooked up a 4k@60Hz that
| way for years) and also USB-C docks that allocate lanes for DP
| alt-mode and USB 3.1. Obviously, Thunderbolt docks also work.
|
| [1]
| https://www.thunderbolttechnology.net/sites/default/files/ID...
| [2] https://www.thunderbolttechnology.net/sites/default/files/T
| h....
| torginus wrote:
| My work Thinkpad P52 and Macbook Pro M1 both support TB and DP
| alt mode.
| timmaxw wrote:
| > AFAIK no laptop supports both modes
|
| Are you sure? From what I've seen, it seems common for laptops
| to support the combination of Thunderbolt and DisplayPort
| Alternate Mode. (Both my MacBook and my Thinkpad T480s have
| ports like this.)
| realityking wrote:
| AFAIK all MacS that support Thunderbolt also support
| DisplayPort alt mode. Is that different on the PC side? That'd
| be quite surprising.
|
| What Macs don't support ist DisplayPort MST. So the only way to
| power two monitors with one adapter would indeed be
| Thunderbolt.
| lstamour wrote:
| Personal anecdote but I've found many thunderbolt or USB-based
| displays seem to suffer from the plug and unplug issue. I've
| had the most success historically using the DisplayPort over
| USB-C spec with an 8K-compatible cable (that means it's the
| latest spec version): https://www.displayport.org/displayport-
| over-usb-c/
|
| Outside of that... some USB-C based docks likely use the above
| standard internally, plus USB-C spec support for driverless
| Ethernet, hubs, etc.
|
| That said, there's always something to complain about with
| these accessories and cables, it seems...
| satrday wrote:
| The thunderbolt protocol is backwards compatible, so a USB-C
| dock should work when plugged into a laptop's Thunderbolt port.
| CalDigit has a USB-C dock and one of the biggest "features"
| they push is its compatibility.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| OMG. That might explain why the piece of shit dongle my work
| provided managed to bring my entire internet connection down for
| all the devices on it by downloading multi-gig OS update from
| Apple at a screaming 1.2MB/s (yes, one point two megabytes per
| second) over my _symmetric gigabit_ internet connection.
|
| Somehow I couldn't ping google from my windows desktop connected
| via ethernet, or access the web via my phone or ipad via wifi.
| The router itself couldn't even ping anything.
|
| The weirdest thing was the update never so much as paused and it
| wasn't using even 3% of my bandwidth. I'm not network engineer
| enough to even guess how the fuck it did that.
|
| Once the update was done I just unplugged the Ethernet and used
| built in wifi cause I needed the HDMI/USB 3 ports on it. Zero
| problems thereafter. Internet was fine on every device.
|
| It was shaped just like the pieces of shit in this article.
| jcelerier wrote:
| even without USB-C, I'm under the impression that somewhere in
| the stack there's an overflow: _every single_ of my USB3 hubs
| after some time (a few weeks not being turned off) enter into
| some locked state where they just don 't work anymore, on all of
| my computers
| ApolIllo wrote:
| > I appear to be paying a lot of money for products that I could
| buy for cheap on random websites is starting to piss me off a bit
| at this point.
|
| The last 5+ years as an Amazon customer have me feeling this way.
|
| > Realtek RTL8153
|
| Could the Realtek issues be related to power?
|
| I have a Tbolt dock which is powered using a DC barrel jack
| (6.5amps @ 20V). The comparison is not great as the dock
| (TBT3-UDZ) is not a USB C dock and uses the Intel i211 nic.
|
| The author appears to have found stability with the Anker
| PowerExpand 8-in-1, which has the buck converter with power
| management components.
|
| I've had terrible experiences with the Satechi Multiport Adapter
| V2 and ICY BOX USB-C type adapters.
|
| I suspect that the issues can typically narrow down with any dock
| to bandwidth or power.
| 9oliYQjP wrote:
| At least with respect to macOS, the Realtek 8153 chipsets in
| these docks suffer from having to use the built-in ECM driver.
| If you're on Apple Silicon, that's your only option. If you're
| on Intel, there are some flaky but more performant drivers from
| Realtek available. The ECM driver will cause high CPU load and
| for many users, will result in performance that's worse than
| wifi because of it. You'll also get audio dropouts and system
| hitches from the CPU loading.
|
| If you can find an adapter that uses the Realtek 8156 chipset,
| which I believe the CalDigit TS4 uses, macOS will utilize the
| NCM driver and your performance will be rock solid.
|
| ECM is a very primitive USB protocol for ethernet, whereas NCM
| is a more modern and performant one. NCM is to ECM as UASP is
| to BOT mode, if you're familiar with USB external drives.
| bombcar wrote:
| Power is a real concern - and if you have something pushing
| lots of pixels or data you should be suspicious of it if it
| doesn't have a power brick.
| baybal2 wrote:
| I am making these Type-C hubs for a living, and indeed RTL8153
| is the most trouble free, and cheap chip on the market.
|
| Though, I myself had misfortune buying broken RTL8153 based
| ethernet NICs. Mismatched coupling capacitors, PCB shorts,
| possibly broken firmwares.
|
| 40%-30% people who do EE in China are just above the Arduino
| level.
|
| Chinese engineering companies can make good hardware if you pay
| them, and give time to fix self induced issues coming from
| rushed development schedules, but in that case, they are not
| really that ahead from any other EE companies around the world.
| danieldk wrote:
| _Though, I myself had misfortune buying broken RTL8153 based
| ethernet NICs._
|
| One of the issues with the RTL8153 NIC is (as a sibling
| commenter points out) that on M1 Macs, you are confined to
| the CDC-ECM driver. RTL8153 with this driver usually cap at
| ~700MBit and cause a lot of CPU load (usually restricted to
| the efficiency cores, but it's still pretty bad anyway).
|
| For USB docks, I can still understand the choice. But IMO
| this is inexcusable for Thunderbolt docks. You can tunnel
| PCI-E, so nothing holds dock makers from hanging a good NIC
| with well-supported drivers on the PCI-E bus. Some higher-end
| Thunderbolt Docks do this AFAIK. The Apple Thunderbolt 2
| Ethernet adapter uses a Broadcom NIC on the PCI-E bus and can
| reach 1000MBit without causing high CPU loads. Unfortunately,
| it requires a Thunderbolt 3 -> 2 adapter, which is more
| expensive than the Ethernet adapter itself.
| hbarka wrote:
| This beautiful block of metal is my go-to:
| https://www.amazon.com/Docking-Station-Dtation-Thunderbolt-E...
|
| Docking Station, 18in1 USB C Docking Station for Windows/MacBook
| Pro/Air/Thunderbolt 3 Dock with SSD Enclosure 3 HDMI DP100W PD3.0
| RJ45 SD/TF Card Reader Audio&Mic 5 USB Ports.
| sarasasa28 wrote:
| got a mbp 14" and I couldn't be fucking happier. it's like having
| a brand new 2015 mbp but with M1
| anoncow wrote:
| A related question: Is there a cheap way of splitting
| USB-C/Thunderbolt port on most Dell laptops to 2 HDMI outputs
| without buying an expensive hub?
| jonathanlydall wrote:
| A quick search on Google for "USB-C to Dual HDMI" seems to show
| lots of options.
| weq wrote:
| thank you to the poster because i had this issue the other day
| with junk rebranded hubs that couldnt even power 3 devices at
| once on a 6 port hub! spent hours chasing my tail on things
| caused by the dodgy insides. my experience here is buy the best u
| can, or the cheapest u can (and a few of them atleast).
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| This same topic drives me mad too.
|
| I got a USB-C Satechi hub, for some inexplicable reason, the
| webcam didn't work and other devices were super flaky. Maybe
| faulty unit? I returned it anyway.
|
| I got another USB-C hub with HDMI and it didn't really work well
| with my monitor -- it turns out my monitor is 3440x1440, but has
| an HDMI port which does not support that resolution at 60Hz, so
| the HDMI is unusable. Oh well, not the USB-C hub's fault, but it
| still turns out I can't use one with this monitor.
|
| So I got a Thunderbolt one. But that didn't work because it's
| Thunderbolt 4, and my laptop is only Thunderbolt 3. Of course,
| both are identical cables, and Dell's website doesn't explain
| this anywhere -- I only figured it out thanks to Reddit.
|
| Okay, so I got another Thunderbolt one -- TB3 this time. That
| does mostly work -- except that when the laptop goes to sleep,
| the hub disconnects the keyboard that goes through it, so
| pressing keys won't wake up the laptop again. Oddly, the hub DOES
| feed power to the keyboard, it's just the data connection to the
| laptop that goes to sleep. I've to open the lid and press the
| internal keyboard. Meanwhile, the keyboard's power LED remains
| on.
|
| I also have a monitor light connected to the hub, and it causes
| the opposite issue: the hub keeps powering the light when the
| laptop goes to sleep, so the light stays on. If the laptop turns
| of for any reason during the night, the light turns back on and
| STAYS on after that.
|
| USB-C is a blessing and a curse. It looks like everything is
| interoperable, but it rarely is, and it's not at all obvious what
| products work together and which ones don't. Some cables charge
| my JBL USB-C speaker, but most don't. Some cables are
| Thunderbolt, some aren't. Some work with the webcam, some don't.
| Half these issues I have a mild idea why, half I don't.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> I got another USB-C hub...
|
| I buy computers with the ports I need. No need for a hub at
| all. Even my MBA (from 2015) has an SD slot and regular USB
| ports. This USB-C only thing Apply tried was a big mistake.
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| Having half a dozen cables on my desk that I need to connect
| to my laptop every time I sit down would be a pain, and also
| a huge mess on my desk.
|
| Having USB-A ports would make no difference here, I want to
| deal with LESS cables, not DIFFERENT ones.
| petard wrote:
| The Realtek Ethernet is know to cause issues. Based on reports on
| various Mac forums the most reliable option for Ethernet is
| Apple's own Thunderbolt adapter which uses the Broadcom BCM57762.
| For current Macs it needs to be used in connection with the
| Apple's Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3 adapter.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| This exemplifies the issues I see with a lot of this stuff.
|
| The other day, I was looking at TB4 hubs, and noticed that Every.
| Single. One. had the exact same layout of ports, with different
| cases around them. The price range was damn wide, too.
|
| The different one was CalDigit. That does seem to be a good
| company; though pricey.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| What's the ethernet chip in the Belkin USB-C-ethernet adapter?
|
| https://www.apple.com/shop/product/HJKF2ZM/A/belkin-usb-c-to...
| logbiscuitswave wrote:
| I have a couple of these. It's exactly what you would expect:
| Realtek RTL8153.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I have one of these too. The good thing is that I haven't
| noticed any issues with it, at least with a Mac.
| pabs3 wrote:
| Is there a way to find out what ODM/OEM actually made a rebranded
| product before you buy it?
| stormbrew wrote:
| I got tired of dealing with the fact that every one of these "do
| everything in one box" docks are a mixed bag of variously
| questionable components and just bought a "pure" tb4 hub[1],
| which is a thing that exists now but didn't really before. It's a
| lot nicer to be able to just pick the usbc or tb components I
| need plugged into it rather than have to take shitty NIC 1
| because DP transcoder 2 is good.
|
| I also bought usbc-to-hdmi cables instead of dongles and am very
| happy with both of these decisions. Everything works a lot better
| now.
|
| [1] this one: https://plugable.com/products/tbt4-hub3c
| culopatin wrote:
| This sounds great! Many times the docks have ports I don't care
| about, this way I can attach whatever adapters matter to me
| only. A usbA hub, 2 display port adapters and an Ethernet
| adapter. Sweet!
| rock_artist wrote:
| I was surprised such a technical person wasn't aware of the ODM
| manufacturing so common. Even if you just search a hub in Amazon
| or eBay you'll see similar items with the ~same~ different name.
|
| The only difference you'd might expect is different QA tiers. But
| that's not assured.
|
| USB-C is one of the worst in terms of compliance. He didn't even
| mention the complexity of getting 4k@60hz WITH USB3.0 speeds...
|
| Anyway, for anyone who wants a single plug for Apple devices, any
| Thunderbolt 3/4 would be more reliable.
|
| It's more expensive, but TB requires more certification and able
| to pass enough bandwidth for decent performance (even 5k@60hz
| with USB 3.0).
| mannykannot wrote:
| > So, the first hub in my possession was a "Satechi" branded
| one... Mid 2018, I paid around 90 euros each on Amazon.
|
| From Amazon? What are the odds that they were actually Satechi?
| jelling wrote:
| Would anyone else be interested in a modular hub / kvm system?
| Personally I'm tired of buying and replacing so many hubs, both
| because of new port requirements but also because they tend not
| to last.
| fuzzy2 wrote:
| My main pain point with USB-C is all the confusion and missing
| specs. Often, advertising uses Thunderbolt and USB-C
| interchangeably. It is not. Don't label my USB-C + DisplayPort
| hub "Thunderbolt" when it isn't.
|
| And then there's the specs. Which DisplayPort version does my
| laptop support? The answer may surprise you. I have experience
| with Dell laptops. Rather recent devices still only support DP
| 1.2 over USB-C. How can this be? GPU and everything supports DP
| 1.4, and have been for years.
|
| Because most DisplayPort over USB-C equipment only carries two DP
| lanes, using DP 1.2 _massively_ limits the possible display
| configurations. Adapters that forego USB SuperSpeed+ for more DP
| lanes are extremely rare. Finding them is next to impossible too,
| because who puts that in the specs?
|
| With DP 1.4 you can easily power two 1440p DP 1.4 displays using
| one USB-C connection _and_ still have USB SuperSpeed+. How nice
| that would be. I don't need expensive Thunderbolt devices!
|
| USB-C can do everything and it works well. However, for
| consumers, it's just a big bag of incompatibility and opacity.
| li2uR3ce wrote:
| > My main pain point with USB-C is all the confusion and
| missing specs.
|
| Worse is that, to a search engine, every USB product is exactly
| the same. Search engines take very specific queries and
| overgeneralize them to the point of uselessness. In the case of
| USB cables, basically every conductor fits--yes, even the god
| damned Romex. Some hyperbole sure, but it's hard to find a
| cable that can do more than charge a phone. "Smart" search
| engine "AI" has "learned" that SuperSpeed = USB = Wire = Romex.
| Auh god it's hard to put down the bitter sarcasm.
|
| Having to click hundreds of product pages to look for specifics
| that a search engine stripped away is hell. It's not even like
| it's limited to USB. Try finding memory... surprise! Just like
| everything is a USB.... everything is a DDR. ECC, the very
| specific thing you need, is DDR. It literally doesn't matter if
| you put ECC in your query. Because DDR = DDR.
|
| Specs don't help sell the product because search engines will
| take all of that spec sheet and decide it's exactly "USB."
|
| And don't get me started on bad product pages that claim to
| sell "SuperSpeed 480 Mbit/s charging cables" Yup, Optimized.
| What does a search engine learn about that product page? Some
| people buy it therefore: relevance +9999. "I was tricked" never
| makes it back to the engine. You can't even flag a product page
| as inaccurate anymore.
|
| I'm so exhausted that I don't want to buy anything anymore.
| Search engines were better when they gave you two results for
| some queries. At least then you knew that the engine wasn't
| capable of servicing the query in a useful way. You used to be
| able to hone your "search skill." No longer. You don't need to
| because now we have learning machines that... can't tell the
| difference between "gave up in futility" and "found what I was
| looking for."
|
| What a spectacular failure search is today.
|
| /rant
| randomblock1 wrote:
| > I appear to be paying a lot of money for products that I could
| buy for cheap on random websites is starting to piss me off a bit
| at this point.
|
| It seems like if you bought an accessory that's just a PCB (which
| means excluding headphones, storage, etc) within the last 5
| years, there's like a 90% chance of it being dropshipped.
|
| At this point, I've just given up and ordered right from
| AliExpress. I can't even name any good accessory manufacturers
| off the top of my head.
| cerved wrote:
| I used to (briefly) work asa PM for a company (guy) with the
| business model - rebrand, rebox and mark-up 2-4x consumer
| electronics from Taiwan and China. I'm not surprised
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| I have a USB-C hub for my Macbook which isn't any of these (it's
| a "VMade") but looks exactly the same.
|
| It's a heap of crap. (Or, at least, the conjunction of it and
| Monterey is a heap of crap.) If I leave it plugged in when the
| Mac goes to sleep, eventually the Mac will kernel panic and force
| a restart. The ethernet just randomly dies, such that I now run
| the Mac permanently off wifi even though I have a superb fibre
| connection. The USB connections do at least work, but that's
| about all I can say of it.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| You get what you pay for! Look at the HP USB & thunderbolt
| dock. They are pretty stable.
|
| In my experience (my team has deployed about 50k in 3 years),
| the thunderbolt ones are more reliable, even if the laptop
| doesn't have thunderbolt.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| This article makes me feel very good about almost always being
| several years behind the edge when it comes to hardware.
|
| By the time I get around to using these devices, hopefully this
| kind of crap will get shaken out, and I'll have a nice stable of
| salvage accessories to choose from.
|
| For now, I'll stick to my (also salvaged) MBP with regular USB,
| audio jacks, MagSafe, HDMI, SD card reader, and an extra
| millimeter or two of thickness. :)
| tomatowurst wrote:
| the one problem is that when I look up the price of Caldigit
| and other brands that HN is vouching for they are $400~$500
| range.
|
| I would need to burn through 8~9 $50~60 range alternatives that
| allegedly "suck" before I see returns, and by that time we
| would have 3 to 4 iterations of macbook.
|
| I guess if you like peace of mind then this makes sense but I
| hope nobody drops $500+ on a hub from reading HN comments, the
| "crappy" ones described work fine, it just that it won't last
| and creates waste but it would take quite a long time to do so.
| ziml77 wrote:
| But they don't work just fine? I mean maybe they do for your
| use case, but I've had functionality issues with cheap
| docks/dongles. Things like not supporting resolution/refresh
| rates combos that it was supposed to or not getting full USB
| speeds. And there are people here saying that they've even
| had these devices take down their networks.
| mulderc wrote:
| I must be some USB-C unicorn as I can't think of ever having any
| issues.
|
| I have had a couple of USB-C hubs and they have worked for both
| me and my partner. All my work machines are USB-C only and
| literally the only issue I can remember is where in one
| conference room the USB-C to HDMI output only went to 2 of the 3
| screens on the walls but I think that was something unrelated to
| the USB-C connection.
|
| Now I don't push my USB-C hubs hard but did run ethernet, HDMI,
| and USB-A device or two pretty often and everything worked as
| expected.
| cortesoft wrote:
| The author's main complaint is that the network was being
| downgraded to 100baseTX. If you aren't doing a lot of heavy
| local network activity, you might not notice if you are being
| downgraded.
| mulderc wrote:
| Since much of my USB-C hub usage was during COVID and work at
| home, I did do a ton of speed tests and don't remember seeing
| any issues with being downgraded but if it was random then I
| might not have noticed.
| culopatin wrote:
| Since the author only shares complaints and no solutions, I
| figured I'd share an option.
|
| I've been using an HP Thunderbolt G2 dock with my M1 Pro and I
| get a 95% success rate.
|
| The 5% failure rate is, I suspect, linked to my LG monitor more
| than the dock itself. I get some flickering sometimes that is
| resolved by restarting the monitor or restarting the dock.
| Happens 1 in 20 connections maybe. I also use the monitor with a
| windows computer and there is some funky color issue going on
| where if I go back to windows after using the Mac everything is
| at 200% saturation and 1% brightness or something like that.
|
| Other than that, Ethernet is fast, I connect to 2 monitors at
| different refresh rates and I have all the ports I need with just
| one cable connected to the laptop.
| robotnikman wrote:
| Seconded on the HP G2 dock, but with Windows laptops.
|
| I use it to switch between my work and home laptops, and it has
| worked without issue. Currently running 3 monitors with it (2
| 1440p 1 1080p), gigabit ethernet, and at least 5 usb devices.
| JonChesterfield wrote:
| Lenovo dock gen 2 here. Running power, three monitors, ethernet,
| misc low bandwidth usb peripherals. Totally robust on windows and
| linux, I don't have an osx box at present.
|
| It was not competitively priced and I feel a lot better about
| that after this post.
| drzoltar wrote:
| Sad to see Anker on the list. I used to think of them as a pretty
| reliable electronics manufacturer in a sea of low quality
| chargers and hubs.
| DHPersonal wrote:
| I didn't realize that they were just another one of those
| rebranding companies. I thought people ripped off Anker, rather
| than the competition and Anker pulling from some other common
| source.
| cyral wrote:
| FWIW I compared CE-Link and Anker's websites and at least the
| power bank and charging block sections didn't seem to be
| rebranded. Yes, they sell the same type of products, but the
| design (location of buttons, ports, etc) seems be different.
| I only took a quick look though so I could have missed more.
|
| They have been using "Apple" style packaging (nice "unboxing
| experience" kind of boxes) and include slogans like "americas
| favorite charging brand" (the broken english on their website
| doesn't reassure me) on recent products I've bought from
| them, so they are certainly trying to make a brand for
| themselves as being above the standard junk you can find on
| Amazon, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was rebranded.
| danieldk wrote:
| They are not great. I had a USB-C adapter of theirs years ago.
| While the adapter itself worked pretty ok (besides only
| supporting 4k@30Hz), it was so badly shielded that it would
| reliably drop any Bluetooth or WiFi connection in its vicinity.
| I browsed through the Amazon reviews and it turned out that
| there were many people with the same issues (and also later
| USB-C adapters).
|
| I know that USB-C can cause interference on Bluetooth/WiFi
| bands, but this was never an issue with properly shielded
| adapters.
| grapeskin wrote:
| I got a few Anker keyboards years back and they were the worst
| ones I've ever used. They failed for no reason after a few
| months.
|
| At that time, comments saying Anker was the best peripheral
| maker flooded the internet and made me feel like I was crazy.
| InTheArena wrote:
| I have their TB4 dock. It works well with a Intel mac. Not so
| well with a M1 mac.
|
| Might be a issue on the other end of the thunderbolt connector.
| spyspy wrote:
| For what it's worth I have the Anker 777 I bought with my WFH
| budget and it's been fine with my M1.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0928W3XHD
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Oh hey, Realtek networking. That's _the_ thing that made me give
| up on trying to Hackintosh back in the Snow Leopard days. The
| weird ported-from-Linux kexts that existed at the time would just
| give up and kill the network after a few GBs transmitted - not
| even enough to download contemporary Xcode. Glad to hear even the
| official experience with these chips is just as bad /s
| mrjin wrote:
| I actually took a look at those full resolution pictures. The
| soldering quality of the Satechi dock was awful. Given the price,
| I was expecting something much better than that.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| This is a weird post, because as far as I can tell, his final
| purchase (the Anker hub) never went wrong. He just took it apart
| for the hell of it.
|
| Shouldn't the summary be "Hey, this Anker hub which looks quite
| different to the other two is actually pretty good"?
| Evidlo wrote:
| Why do people buy laptops that don't have this stuff already on
| it?
|
| I run an engineering course and it's almost comical how often
| students have to set aside their $2000 Macbooks and use the
| desktop workstations because they forgot their dongles at home.
|
| My Thinkpad has 6 USB ports (2 USB 3.0), SDCard, DisplayPort,
| VGA, ethernet and also e-sata and Firewire which I've never used.
| hpb42 wrote:
| I got a new laptop for work that has: 1 USB3 type A, 1 USB-C, 1
| Thunderbolt4 in USB-C connetor, 1 HDMI, 1 audio jack, and 1
| Power connector. No ethernet. My boss bought me a caldigit
| element hub to be able to connect mouse and keyboard... We were
| all disappointed when we realized there was not enough "normal"
| USB ports.
| kuschku wrote:
| The T470 is IMO the percect thinkpad.
|
| 3x USB 3.0 1x Thunderbolt 3 (with USB-PD support) Lenovo
| Charging port Lenovo Docking port HDMI, SDcard, Ethernet, SIM,
| SmartCard
|
| It works with the oldest thinkpad docks and the newest
| thunderbolt docks at the same time.
| andrewia wrote:
| Because it's convenient to carry around thin and light
| notebooks. Especially the ones that flip around to a tablet,
| making it easy to sketch ideas with a stylus. In addition, it
| becomes annoying to plug in multiple cables every time you wish
| to dock. USB, audio, power, ethernet, and video. USB-C is much
| more convenient when it works. I went through a similar churn
| as the author and finally settled on a StarTech-branded hub
| that has few bugs. Now, when I want to switch my setup between
| my work and personal laptops, I just unplug a single cable and
| switch devices. I can even connect my phone to the dock if I
| need to type a lot in an app, download a lot of data to it, or
| connect external storage.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Because I don't use any of that stuff and don't care. I can
| plug my macbook in with a single cable and it charges and runs
| the display. I will literally never need VGA, e-sata, or
| firewire. I'd put just the aesthetics of the device over having
| useless ports.
| drstewart wrote:
| You bought a laptop without a SCSI port?
|
| Can I ask why you bought a laptop that doesn't have that
| already on it?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Is this really supposed to be a counterargument?
|
| The question is obviously why people buy laptops without
| _ports they need_.
| daveoc64 wrote:
| Even on a laptop with plenty of ports, it's very convenient to
| be able to plug in just one cable and get power, video,
| ethernet, mouse, keyboard etc.
| djur wrote:
| Cheap laptops also have a lot of cheap shitty hardware on them
| supporting those peripherals. It's not as clear cut as "on
| board good, on hub bad".
| loudthing wrote:
| Honest answer: Apple is a lifestyle brand, however they manage
| to offer a superior product to the layman because they have
| tight control over both hardware and software codevelopment. In
| my experience, people tend to also like Apple hardware because
| Apple stores are ubiquitous, so when you need a repair done,
| you just take it to your local mall and get it fixed rather
| than mailing it away to Lenovo and hoping for the best.
|
| Out of curiosity, in your engineering course, what are students
| expected to used to their own computers for? In my experience,
| any engineering course with labs that would require dongles
| supply desktop computers anyway. Your school doesn't have
| desktops in the classroom right? What equipment are you
| interfacing with that would be easily both mac and pc
| compatible anyway?
| dymk wrote:
| > Apple is a lifestyle brand
|
| If "I want it to just work" is a lifestyle, then yeah, it's a
| lifestyle brand.
| TillE wrote:
| It's astounding how difficult it is to find non-garbage
| build quality on, well, pretty much anything. Even just for
| something as basic as a charger, Apple is probably the only
| company you can rely on to not use third-rate electrolytic
| capacitors. Maybe Anker too.
| mst wrote:
| I've had a lot of "just works" with thinkpads' pre-loaded
| windows installs.
|
| Every other windows laptop brand, not so much.
|
| Mileage will of course vary - any thinkpad centric thread
| on here has a bunch of people with experiences like mine
| and a bunch of horror stories, after all.
| loudthing wrote:
| Back in the day I had a Thinkpad T40 tablet that served
| me very well. Absolutely bullet proof PC, and it could
| run Crysis on integrated graphics :)
| loudthing wrote:
| "I want it to just work" is a very subjective phrase. I
| think you'll find the majority of users have very different
| use cases for technology than you do.
|
| Also, try to read past the first sentence before you
| downvote me.
| dymk wrote:
| I didn't downvote you.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| I had this issue too. I switched to a dell monitor that used
| USB-C for video and then plugged my other useful devices into the
| monitor. I have two other monitors that use USB-C too, but I
| opted for a DVI to USB-C for the two monitors. I still have two
| available USB-C ports and if I'm in a bind I use one of these
| crap adapters via USB-C but that hasn't happened in quite some
| time.
| _hark wrote:
| Would be great to see a "Hacker News Approved" buyer's guide for
| various products. Like Wirecutter but written by people who
| actually know what they're talking about.
| refulgentis wrote:
| Wirecutter is pretty good imho! (A person on) Hacker News
| approved! ;)
| Jhsto wrote:
| If you use a laptop with an external monitor, a better idea is to
| get a premium monitor which handles charging, video, and data
| transfer of USB devices connected to the monitor for you. This
| allowed me to get rid off the wonky USBC hubs, but before my
| employer got me a Dell monitor I didn't know that a single USBC
| connection can deliver all three.
| certifiedloud wrote:
| I had several dongles and wires handing from my laptop until I
| read your comment just now. thanks!
| tobyhinloopen wrote:
| Elgato Thunderbolt Dock does it perfectly and doesn't limit
| your display options to just a handful of very expensive
| thunderbolt displays
| FemmeAndroid wrote:
| I went this route. I have a supposedly good Dell monitor where
| one of my devices will connect via video but not recognize
| attached USB devices 4 out of 5 times so I need to plug and
| unplug a bunch of times every day. It can take over 15 attempts
| on a bad day. Never again.
| i_like_robots wrote:
| My experience is similar. I also "burned out" a couple of USB-C
| hubs (including a very similar Anker branded unit) so
| eventually upgraded to a decent monitor with integrated USB-C
| hub. Being able to switch between all the laptops in our
| household and my PC with only one cable has been really great.
| Although, we often find our Apple laptops have problems
| recognising the connected devices so we have to connect and re-
| connect a few times to ensure everything is working as it
| should. No such problems with the PC!
| jonasdegendt wrote:
| This is the real life hack, no more dongles nor docking
| stations, but all of the benefits of just having to plug in 1
| cable.
|
| This route doesn't have to be expensive either, my 1440p, 27
| inch Philips docking monitor cost $270, basically the price of
| mediocre level docking station.
| cortesoft wrote:
| This doesn't help for travel.
| fivea wrote:
| > If you use a laptop with an external monitor, a better idea
| is to get a premium monitor which handles charging, video, and
| data transfer of USB devices connected to the monitor for you.
|
| I made this mistake, and I ended up with a grossly overpriced
| monitor which fails to charge a MacBook Pro and whose video
| through USBC support is hit-and-miss, in the sense that it
| doesn't always work.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Look for monitors which advertise thunderbolt and a charging
| wattage. If it still doesn't work then just return it since
| it's defective.
| fivea wrote:
| > Look for monitors which advertise thunderbolt and a
| charging wattage.
|
| I have no idea what led you to believe that someone
| searching for monitors that charge MacBook pros with
| thunderbolt did not checked if the monitor charged MacBook
| pros with thunderbolt.
| wonnage wrote:
| These are great if you just have a laptop. I use the Dell
| S2719DC and I love being able to just get everything by
| plugging in one cable. However, I switch between a laptop and
| desktop, so I wound up buying a separate USB switch for
| peripherals, and it gets kinda confusing:
|
| KB/mouse -> switch -> desktop/monitor
|
| Monitor <-> laptop (usb-c)
|
| Desktop -> monitor (HDMI)
|
| The downsides are that it only supports 45W charging, and you
| can't really use dual monitors.
|
| Ideally I could use a KVM so everything is switched in one
| device. But USB switching is cheap and reliable (my switch cost
| $25 and has been rock solid), whereas the cheapest KVM I could
| find to do this cost $150, doesn't support 144hz, is stuck on
| hdmi 2.0, etc.
| johnwalkr wrote:
| I switched to a 32:9 ultra wide instead of 2 monitors and it
| really works nicely for having multiple computers. Like you,
| I also use the monitor itself to switch inputs. I use
| software (barrier) instead of a KVM though.
|
| Depending on my needs I can run one of my computers using the
| full width, or run 2 at half width each.
| rrix2 wrote:
| I've been using a Dell U38118DW monitor for maybe 8 months[ed:
| purchased it in July 2020 so closer to 20 months!] now and
| quite content with it. It has an internal USB hub that can be
| switched between two USB-3a and USB-C depending on which
| display input is active. I have my desktop attached to one of
| the 3a and HDMI, and can plug my frame.work laptop in to the
| USB-C to get 60hz Display Port alt-mode, charging, and all the
| usb peripherals swapping over.
|
| though of course my laptop's intel GPU + mesa drivers tears
| drawing to the screen, but i generally don't care and don't
| watch video or play games on the laptop
| lliamander wrote:
| So both computers and all your peripherals are connected to
| the monitor, correct?
|
| And you can just swap between them by switching the active
| input source?
| rrix2 wrote:
| Yup, and I can swap between them by plugging my laptop in
| to the USB-C while it's turned in, input autodetection
| handles the rest.
| lliamander wrote:
| That's awesome! That monitor is a 38" 3840 X 1600
| display, right? What do you think of it overall?
| slipheen wrote:
| (I am not the poster you were replying to) - I wanted to
| add that I have the 40" 5K2K version (U4021QW) and I'd
| recommend it very highly.
|
| I do the same input switching he mentioned, and it works
| very reliably.
|
| It also has support for pbp mode, where it can display
| each computer on a portion of the screen.
| lliamander wrote:
| That is also a model I've looked at very closely. Good to
| know that it can do that!
|
| Currently I have a 34" 3440 x 1440, and with two separate
| docking stations (one for each laptop) and a USB hub for
| my peripherals that is connected to both docking
| stations. It's a lot of extra mess on my desk that
| ideally I would like to cleanup with having everything
| connect directly to the monitor.
|
| BTW, how is the resolution on the 40"? Can you use it
| with native resolution, or do you have to do any scaling?
| Having all of that extra screen real estate would be
| awesome
| theta_d wrote:
| I've had this Thunderbolt Doc for over a month now and I love it.
| https://www.owcdigital.com/products/thunderbolt-dock
| eckza wrote:
| One of the biggest reasons that I went through the trouble of
| switching to a Surface Book 3 + Surface Dock 2 was to make _damn
| sure_ that my desk docking station setup worked well. (Plus, I'm
| a sucker for the Surface Magsafe-ripoff connector.)
|
| I'm running a Dell 27" 4K monitor and a ViewSonic 15" portable
| 1080p monitor along with the internal display full-time, with
| both external displays plugged in via USB-C on the Surface dock;
| and it's been reasonably reliable.
|
| I don't have any other USB-C peripherals plugged in to the dock,
| and I haven't tried a fourth display; but so far, so good, no
| complaints.
| Inviz wrote:
| I'm on the lookup for TB4 dock myself. Caldigit stuff is out of
| stock. Stumbled upon this promising cheap alternative
| https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001486390431.html?spm=a2...
| that is a little north of 100$ and has m2 slot. Not sure if
| drives dual 5k displays, but it seems it should.
| larusso wrote:
| I kind of went to the same story just two devices shorter in 2017
| when I switched from a 2014 MacBook Pro to the worst Mac I ever
| had. I also got me one of these USB-C dongle things. Display etc
| worked good (but was very picky about the display) but it created
| issues with Bluetooth and Wifi. I looked up other devices and saw
| that all of them looked pretty much the same just with a
| different name printed on them. There was and still is a huge gap
| between these not so cheap USB-C dongles and the better working
| Thunderbolt hubs. I also switched to one in the end. Not without
| it's own issues.
|
| But this issue is we see not only with electronics. Amazon (here
| in germany) is flooded with cheap knockoff products. Everything
| under 100EUR is mostly trash. It gets super annoying to find
| something for a reasonable price with a somewhat good quality.
| mherdeg wrote:
| Kind of surprised the author didn't describe getting refunds --
| the behavior here seems like it should have triggered European
| consumer protections.
| archi42 wrote:
| Hm, might this be a problem with the limited bandwidth? I missed
| the whole USB-C hub hassle (though normal, cheap USB 2.0 hubs are
| already a PITA, and that's old tech) because my monitor has a
| built-in USB-C "dock" at USB 3.2 Gen 2 10Gb/s. But when I put the
| display into 100Hz mode, IIRC the USB connection degrades to
| slower speeds (even USB 2.0?). This especially seems to affect
| the integrated Gigabit Ethernet port. I didn't test it in detail
| since I only have a few 2.0 devices connected to it and don't use
| that Ethernet port at all (works poorly with KVM), so I don't
| really care and that's only what I recall from when I bought it.
| moritonal wrote:
| 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/
| __alexs wrote:
| Some CalDigit docks have this fun issue where if you plug the
| wrong sort of adapter into the wrong sort of USB-C port it will
| brick the port if not the entire device on the other end.
| nerdawson wrote:
| As I was scrolling through the article, I was hoping to see the
| TS3 amongst the docks torn down.
|
| I was happy with mine until I started using an extra display
| with it recently. The main display is hooked up via
| DisplayPort. The problem arose when I added a second display
| over USB C.
|
| For some reason, when I plug the monitor into the dock, there's
| a faint electrical noise. If I plug the monitor into a USB C
| port on the laptop instead, it's perfectly quiet. Maybe I
| should attempt HDMI instead. Either way it's frustrating.
| muro wrote:
| I found a random USB-c monitor to be a decent hub (I used a
| cheap Lenovo, was great). No ethernet cable, however wifi is
| usually good enough, if not faster.
|
| If it needs to be Thunderbolt and money is no object, there is
| the Apple Studio Display with 3 USB-C ports.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| While we are recommending, I've been very happy with my
| purchase of Dell's docking station. "Dell WD19TB Thunderbolt
| Docking Station", to be specific. Works well with MBP.
|
| It has some Windows specific features that don't work with
| Apple machines. So DYOR.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Basically one of the few that actually does what it says on the
| box reliably.
|
| Even the OWC brand one I had was flakey, at similar $200-400
| price point.
| xattt wrote:
| I ended up getting a Lenovo USB-C Gen 2 hub a couple of years
| ago, and it's still on sale. Also very satisfied.
|
| I'm able to switch my personal (Lenovo) and work (Dell)
| laptops, mostly without issue. I say without issue because the
| Dell/Intel only supports HBM2 so won't do two monitors if one
| of them is more than 1080p.
|
| I settled on using the HDMI out from the laptop to split the
| difference in frustration and convenience.
| danieldk wrote:
| _I ended up getting a Lenovo USB-C Gen 2 hub a couple of
| years ago,_
|
| It works fine on ThinkPads. Unless you are using Linux, where
| 4k@60Hz does not work due to lane misconfiguration (maybe
| this is fixed by now?). On Macs, I have found this Dock to be
| a complete disaster. It would often not charge unless you
| plug/unplug the Dock several times. Also Ethernet often
| doesn't work (it uses a Realtek NIC). I had two and sold both
| of them, because they are practically unusable with Macs, and
| replaced them by Startech Thunderbolt 3 Docks, which work
| great.
| xattt wrote:
| There have been a couple of firmware updates over my couple
| years of ownership. I had a couple of issues with the dock
| simply not connecting to the non-Lenovo computer, but this
| was fixed with the fw update early last year.
| danieldk wrote:
| These issues were with the firmware updates early last
| year (I think the last update I tried was from April
| 2021). I see that they finally provided a new firmware
| update March this year. Too late \o/.
| xattt wrote:
| And hence the slow descent into madness!
| conradev wrote:
| CalDigit's TS3, TS3 Plus, and now the TS4 are all incredible
| products.
|
| I have used them with my MacBooks over the years as well as my
| gaming PC (ASUS ProArt B550 motherboard), and they are the most
| reliable part of my desktop setup. They are not just reliable,
| but reliably fast. I get full gigabit ethernet speed, fast USB
| transfer speeds, and fast SD card reading, without fail, every
| time.
| zdefz wrote:
| The thunderbolt 4 element hub is causing kernel panics on M1
| devices running in RAID 0. It is unnreliable and requires
| additional cooling to keep my mind safe. I in fact created this
| account just to warn you.
|
| I had two of them with 3 Sabrent Thunderbolt SSDs each. So when
| you setup a RAID level and then copy data from A to B, it did
| crash for me each time. For copy I used "Carbon Copy Cloner"
|
| In fact I go so far to say Thunderbolt is not reliable at all
| for 24/7 use, as it gets much hotter and currently would
| require active cooling to prevent throttling.
| bsder wrote:
| For the sake of anecdata, I found that even the Caldigit docks
| fail to work on the Intel Macbook Pros (I only have a single
| data point about the M1s and they didn't work there either).
| When I hook even basic things like my keyboard and mouse up to
| the USB A ports, things work for about 20 minutes or so (varies
| widely) and then the USB A ports go dead requiring a reboot to
| restore.
|
| This is a known failure mode, but it doesn't hit everybody. It
| is _solely_ an Apple software fault as older OSs do not exhibit
| it. I _really_ wish I knew what the issue was.
|
| On the plus side, I found this so infuriating that I finally
| threw all in and switched to Linux full-time (Lenovo X1 Carbon
| with a ThinkPad dock) and haven't looked back since.
|
| Side note: practically every thunderbolt dock I have works fine
| with every x86 laptop I have running either Windows or Linux
| (including the Caldigit!). YMMV.
| iends wrote:
| My entire team and a few other developers I work with have
| had zero issues with CalDigit TS3 on Intel Macs. At least 10
| TS3s over the period of several years.
| gernb wrote:
| While I agree that's a great dock, IIUC, it's not technically a
| USB-C dock, it's a Thunderbolt dock. I know it's the same cable
| but IIUC it's not USB-C?
| fastball wrote:
| USB-C is the connector type, so yes Thunderbolt 4 uses USB-C.
| The transport standard is USB-[some number], current gen
| being USB-4 (which is actually based on the TB3 standard).
| aldebran wrote:
| My work gave me this. I have a 2019 16" i9 MacBook that crashes
| in every other unplug plug of this dock. Here's the most
| amazing issue with this dock yet: it somehow resets my router
| through the ethernet port I'm using to connect to the router.
| No other device has this issue. Other than this dock, nothing
| else causes any issue working with my router.
|
| I went through 2 of these and finally bought generic usb C hubs
| and run 2x usbc->HDMI for 2x displays.
| Phrodo_00 wrote:
| While there certainly is something nice about plugging in a
| single cable, I just use a usb-c hub with a usb ethernet and a
| usb switch with my peripherals and then connect my screen
| directly
|
| This is cheaper in the same way I don't use a KVM and instead
| change the inputs in my monitor (Also, I'd have to figure out
| what DP KVM supports G-Sync and 1440p 165hz).
| kaylynb wrote:
| Same here. I can't really use a monitor that's less that
| 120Hz, even for engineering work. 60Hz monitors give me eye
| strain.
|
| It's impossible to find any KVM at any price point that works
| with 120Hz, and certainly not 120Hz@3840x1600. Forget about
| G-Sync.
|
| I resorted to just keeping short USB and DP or TB->DP cable
| extenders plugged into the computer ports and have a "cable
| zone" where I just unplug and replug all the cables to switch
| machines. The short extensions are to protect the ports in
| the machines from wearing out.
|
| It's way cheaper than any KVM and it actually works.
| Transisto wrote:
| What kind of visual components are visually different
| between 60 and 120hz?
|
| I do dev and browsing work at 30hz and the only thing I
| notice is the little gaps when moving the mouse fast.
| adamzegelin wrote:
| I've had good success with a 1x4 KVM from Level1Techs. I
| use it paired with a Alienware AW3418DW 3440x1440 120Hz
| G-Sync monitor. My PC has a NVIDIA 2080 and G-Sync+120Hz
| works fine through the KVM. I also have my MBP connected,
| via a CalDigit dock, and it can push 120Hz to the monitor
| too.
|
| Level1Techs a small shop that I discovered via their
| YouTube channel. While they don't manufacturer the KVM
| themselves (all to common, see the OP link), they look to
| have done rigorous testing and compatibility analysis. They
| claim it works up to 3840x2160@120hz because it supports DP
| 1.4.
|
| https://store.level1techs.com/products/14-display-port-
| kvm-s...
| zeristor wrote:
| Don't you mean "so good you bought the company"?
| sitkack wrote:
| For everyone under 40, there was a shaver ad that flooded the
| airwaves of our youth where some guy (Victor) would say, "I
| liked it so much I bought the company".
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qf22bddvLnc
| buggeryorkshire wrote:
| Good to see you again Victor!
| whatever1 wrote:
| What network controller does it have? Is it the same realtek ?
| whatever1 wrote:
| Replying to myself. From a tear down it seems like the TS3
| plus version uses an intel network controller!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8f6Zs1JyZBQ
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| I've been very happy with this OWC thunderbolt dock. No monitor
| outputs, but as someone who is juggling so many hard drives for
| video/audio projects - mostly running 3-2-1 backup protocol for
| my salaried job AND freelance clients AND personal work - the
| large number of ports and wall power are critical. I had so
| many problems with bus powered drives drawing too much and then
| randomly ejecting because I have too many plugged in. This
| thing solved it immediately.
|
| On my M1 Mac mini, between the OWC dock and another dongle (bus
| powered) and the remaining ports on the Mac, I can run 10+
| drives with no problem plus multiple peripherals. That may seem
| excessive, but when you're juggling between drives trying to
| find old projects for people or trying to build a demo reel, it
| speeds up the process immensely. It also enabled me to
| consolidate a bunch of old 1 to 3 TB drives onto a couple of
| master 16 TB drives with everything in front of me at once,
| saving a ton of time, stress, and double checking.
|
| Frankly it's just nice not having to unplug something two or
| three times a day just to be able to plug in something else. I
| always have an available port now and it's got me so much
| better organized.
|
| https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/owc-thunderbolt-dock
| makeitdouble wrote:
| 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.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| >how hard it must be to make a "decent" thunderbolt dock.
|
| I'd been thinking about this and want to add to the evidence
| that even though MacBooks were USB-C only for years and years
| Apple never shipped a dock they only shipped single port
| dongles.
|
| No way would Apple not sell a $500-$800 dock that could
| "solve the usb-c problem" unless there was a good reason and
| I think the reason is this solution is inherently janky for
| some unsolvable engineering reason and only single port
| cables are reliable to the level Apple was happy with.
| rektide wrote:
| 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.
| arcticbull wrote:
| I'm a huge fan of the Dell WD19TB. Works great on my MacBook
| Pro M1 Pro (did I mention it's for Pros) and my gaming PC. The
| only issue I have with it is that the PC will only run video
| over Thunderbolt if I use YCbCr 4:2:2 with chroma subsampling -
| so instead I wired my PC monitor directly to the GPU and use
| the WD19TB for everything else (including video on my Mac
| laptop over HDMI).
|
| Gets a solid 980Mbits symmetric on the ethernet port, 90W of
| power delivery, etc. It's a lifesaver swapping just the one
| cable between my PC and laptop.
|
| Works in USB-C mode too.
| ruuda wrote:
| I have been using this one for years, it used to drive two 4k
| displays at 60 Hz. But since half a year or so, I can't get
| the second display to run at 60 Hz any more. I think it's a
| regression in the Linux kernel, but it's basically impossible
| to debug. A few times it suddenly did recognize it can do two
| displays at 60 Hz, but it seems to depend on the phase of the
| moon :/
| arcticbull wrote:
| Dude video over these hubs - even the good ones - is so hit
| and miss. It's really frustrating actually.
| TheNewAndy wrote:
| It is missing Ethernet, which seems to be important to the
| author.
|
| Having heard positive things about caldigit, I got their USB-C
| Pro Dock and I get frequent screen blanking with my M1 Mac, and
| often some of the USB ports fail to work. I don't use the
| ethernet port, but I think it is a Realtek (so likely the same
| thing the author is complaining about)
|
| I have spoken to caldigit support and so far they have replaced
| the dock once, and now have gone pretty quiet.
| dntrkv wrote:
| Their TS3 dock supports ethernet. I've had mine for well over
| 3 years now and it still works great. Can't say the same for
| the 5+ other docks I had before this one.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _It is missing Ethernet, which seems to be important to the
| author._
|
| CalDigit's TS4 has Ethernet (2.5 GbE). I've been a happy TS3
| user for years.
|
| https://www.caldigit.com/thunderbolt-station-4/
| iends wrote:
| I have a TS3, but it's been hard to get a second or a TS4
| lately.
| skunkworker wrote:
| I have a TS3 for work and looked into the TS4 but it's
| been out of stock everywhere.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| I'm running a CalDigit Connect 10G on a relatively high-end
| NUC and it's great for a quick little Plex box that also
| sits on my 10G network segment next to a TrueNAS box doing
| 2x10G on DAC cables with LACP on a Chelsio T6225-CR.
|
| I had bad luck with the QNAP QNA-T310G1S and Sonnet Solo
| 10G SFP+ (surprising as their stuff is usually rock-solid)
| -- both based on the AQC100S chipset and the aQuantia
| AQtion driver just didn't work for me under LTS Ubuntu.
| manyxcxi wrote:
| I've got the TS 3 Plus dock (which has Ethernet) and it has
| been working flawlessly on my 2020 MBP (Intel) the entire
| time. I _think_ there was a firmware update in the early days
| that unlocked the 85 or 90 watt charging. I had heartburn
| about the price, but it's been worth every penny.
|
| I'm not pushing 4K though, so mileage may vary. I've got a
| 27" TB2 Apple Cinema Display via TB2 to USB-C and a Dell via
| Display port.
|
| As a guy working with Raspberry Pi and 3D printers a lot in
| my free time it is SO NICE to have the card reader right up
| front and easy to access. I also love un/plugging just one
| cord when I'm on the go.
| greggman3 wrote:
| I have the TS3. It's been great BUT.... the Mac has not
| been great with it in the following ways.
|
| (1) I keep my MBP closed. It take 10-30 seconds for it to
| wake up on keypress. That's so long that I often have no
| way to tell if it noticed I pressed key.
|
| (2) If XCode is debugging and the screen sleeps then MacOS
| 12 never recovers unless I disconnect the cable, open the
| lid, get it wake up on the laptop monitor, and then plug it
| back in and finally close the lid.
|
| I get why #2 is rare and therefore not fixed but still
| (T_T)
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| Yeah, I kept running into docking problems trying to keep
| the lid closed as well. It seemed like it worked less
| than half the time. Worst-case I'd have to restart.
| Sometimes it'd wake up with no mouse or kbd working,
| other times my dual 4K60 monitors would be switched
| left/right, many times just...nothing...
|
| Pretty lame that one of the "best" laptop mfgs in the
| world can't make docks work right with one of the biggest
| CPU / IP mfgs in the world. Laptop sleep states were a
| problem back in the early 90s on Linux...some things
| really never change.
| gmac wrote:
| By the way, there were bad problems with the TS3+, Intel
| MacBook Pro 13" 2020 and macOS 12.2 (no USB or Ethernet
| until reboot after unplugging and re-plugging), which
| were fixed in 12.3.
| manyxcxi wrote:
| I keep my lid closed as well and I've never had it not
| wake up. Though, with the latest is version it has seemed
| slower to wake at times.
| vetinari wrote:
| I'm using OWC TB3 dock, it has the same (1) problem. In
| the past, I've used Kanex TB2 dock and it was the same.
|
| So for the feedback on keypress, I'm using devices with
| backlight. Both keyboard or mouse work fine, once they
| light up, you know that it is waking up.
| moritonal wrote:
| For the Ethernet I enjoyed the fact the dock was clean and
| unopinionated, just providing USB ports so I could use a USB-
| C-to-Ethernet adapter.
|
| Your comments about the Screen Blanking sound bad and are are
| likely correct, I only have an Intel Mac to compare.
| TheNewAndy wrote:
| I have used the dock with windows and Linux machines and
| seen solar issues btw. So I would expect the same with an
| Intel mac
| vetinari wrote:
| The screen blanking with M1 was driving me crazy. I went
| through untold amount of cables, and ended up with miniDP
| (on the dock) to DP (on the monitor) that doesn't blank,
| but _only_ flickers occasionally.
|
| The funny thing is that 2015 Intel MBP (with Apple
| TB2->TB3 adapter) with the same dock and same monitor
| didn't blank or flicker. I guess it is something about
| the new Apple TB implementation in M1.
| watermelon0 wrote:
| Does it have an audible coil whine?
|
| I've tested 5+ TS3 Plus docks, and all of them have a coil
| whine, which can be heard in a quiet room, without playing
| any music.
|
| Sometimes I like to work in silence, and the coil whine
| really bothers me.
| aenis wrote:
| I have two 3x4k display Startech hubs, and one developed a
| very audible coil whine, the other did not. It was so bad
| it landed in a drawer.
|
| Otherwise both worked fine allowing me to drive 3 screens
| on the OG M1 mbp. They each cost around 350 eur though.
| lsaferite wrote:
| Coil whine is about the only time having tinnitus works in
| my favor.
| conradev wrote:
| I usually can detect coil whines to an annoying degree, but
| I don't hear one in my TS3 Plus. Maybe your ears are more
| sensitive than mine!
| nerdawson wrote:
| That sounds like exactly the issue I've just described when
| I plug a USB C display into mine. I actually notice it,
| albeit to a much lesser degree, when I move a USB mouse
| connected to the dock.
|
| Probably time for a change I guess.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| I hear nothing from mine, but this may well be an example
| of me being 52.
| generallee5686 wrote:
| I've had my ts3 for a couple years now. I just noticed a
| pretty bad coil whine on mine lately. I'm not sure if it's
| always been there and my environment's changed or the
| device just suddenly started making the noise.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| So, this is really random, but if you can open up the case
| and figure out what is whining, folding up tinfoil neatly
| in half about a dozen times will make a really effective
| shield and cut like 95% of the whine. I found out about
| this trick from an open-source synth (PreenFM 2, incredible
| little frequency modulation synth) that had some whine due
| to the display. Sticking the thick piece of tinfoil between
| the display and the PCB boosted the SNR an almost
| unbelievable amount. Give it a shot, it only costs time and
| tinfoil! Be sure to stick some electrical tape around
| anything it might contact though, so you don't short
| anything out.
| cmckn wrote:
| I got a thunderbolt 4 dock from Razer[0] that has all the
| bits and bobs (and it looks really nice). Almost bankrupted
| me, but as the GP says, this is just the reality at this
| point.
|
| [0]: https://www.razer.com/gaming-pc-accessories/razer-
| thunderbol...
| kemayo wrote:
| The port arrangement on the front/back of that looks
| identical to the Kensington and Sonnet docks mentioned
| upthread, so I'd suspect that Razer are another vendor of a
| skinned reference design. (Though they're on the cheaper
| end of the spectrum so far, unless someone turns up the
| Aliexpress version.)
| dr_spicy wrote:
| serverlessmom wrote:
| Opened this for the express purpose of plugging caldigit. A
| device that improves on these other devices with a massive
| upgrade in engineering. Full teardown
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8f6Zs1JyZBQ&ab_channel=Camer...
| notatoad wrote:
| what if i don't want a decent dock, or two 4K screens, i just
| want to plug in a hard drive and a mouse at the same time?
|
| is there a USB-C option for me, or is my best bet a USB-A hub,
| a USB a-to-c adapter, and a usb c-to-a adapter.
| katbyte wrote:
| you can get small USB-A <--> USB-C adapters. I picked up a
| few of these since I got a new MacBook and finally had to
| deal with the nightmare of USB-C and its really helped:
| https://www.anker.com/ca/products/variant/usbc-to-
| usb-30-ada...
| ben7799 wrote:
| 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.
| wwalexander wrote:
| 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 ports on these hubs don't support these latest standards or
| have weird issues with them.
|
| It also has a nice mounting bracket [3] that lets you hide the
| cable mess under your desk or behind your monitor.
|
| [1] https://www.kensington.com/p/products/device-docking-
| connect...
|
| [2] https://www.club-3d.com/en/cat/cable/usb_type_c/1606/301/
|
| [3] https://www.kensington.com/p/products/device-docking-
| connect...
| mason55 wrote:
| Can second this recommendation for an M1 Pro MBP. Expensive,
| but I've been very happy with mine. A single cable in and out
| of my laptop to cover power (at a full 95W) plus monitors,
| USB-A peripherals, network, and everything else, super
| amazing.
| culopatin wrote:
| If you were to install monitor control, can you adjust the
| brightness of both monitors or just one?
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| I've had really bad luck with TB3 docks including the OWC and
| CalDigit. It seems that having a stiff TB cable on a non-
| locking port isn't that great of an idea. I ended up rigging
| up some cardboard and lots of tape to reinforce and stabilize
| the dock side of the connection on the OWC, and connecting to
| it would work only about half the time, and even then my dual
| external monitors would usually be swapped L/R.
|
| The best solution to this I've seen is on Angelbird's SD Dual
| Card Reader which uses a sadly proprietary shaped molded
| USB-C connector that goes DEEP into the reader, but it is
| very snug and wiggle-proof. I haven't tried, but I'm
| confident that I could swing this thing around by the cable
| and not hurt it or have it disconnect at all. It really does
| feel like the piece of pro-level kit that would be at home on
| a DIT cart like it was designed for.
|
| The Lenovo TB3 Workstation dock worked relatively well for
| docking an X1 Extreme, and that too has a proprietary
| connector which combines Lenovo's charging plug with a TB3
| connector. It's secure and doesn't wiggle much, but it's
| short and flexible but not terribly so (large bend radius).
|
| Lastly, I'd just like to complain about how lame it is that
| there are so few docks with >1 HDMI or [preferably] DP
| connectors. On the OWC dock, I was literally using 1x MiniDP
| to DP adapter cable for one monitor, then a USB-C DP alt-mode
| dongle plugged into HDMI to the other monitor. Plugging a
| dongle into a dock is serious product-level cringe. Surely
| I'm not the only person in the world who wants to close their
| workstation-class laptop and use it with dual 4K60 32"
| monitors, yet there seem to be so few products that work like
| that. I don't want to dasiy-chain one over TB either. I
| understand the bandwidth limitations and hope that TB4 makes
| this an easier sell.
|
| My Ideal TB4 dock: - LOCKING connector, somehow. Build a cage
| around it like they do for some IECs or mold in a deep strain
| relief or something. - 3X DisplayPort 2.0 (since they lock,
| unlike almost all HDMI that isn't on rackmount pro gear that
| news stations have)...DP 2.0 has been out since 26 June 2019.
| - 25G SFP slot that can take a 10GbE GBIC, DAC, or fiber. I'd
| settle for 10G SFP. - 2x downstream TB4 ports that can fall
| back to USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (ugh, really not a fan of USB IF
| naming conventions) - 4x USB 2.0 type A on a hub to plug in
| all the stuff that doesn't need much bandwidth, like
| keyboards / mice / phone charger / bluetooth dongle /
| YubiKey. - 2x USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type A ports for fastish devices
| like external HDDs that came out before Type C. - Pass
| through the entire 100W and make that actually work with
| MacBooks. I've plugged into so many docks that can't actually
| charge the larger MBPs. They'll give 45w or something, which
| doesn't cut it for MBPs, let alone mobile workstation class
| laptops. 100W would at least keep a laptop with a 45W TDP CPU
| and at least as powerful GPU afloat. I'm talking about stuff
| that comes with 200w+ power bricks here. I don't mind
| terribly plugging in the power adapter separately, just don't
| make me do what Lenovo did and plug TWO POWER BRICKS INTO THE
| DOCK. That's a bit much. - No damn 3.5mm headphone + mic
| jacks (extra audio chipset that is inevitably worse than the
| one built in and much much worse than a proper external pro
| interface), built-in wifi, bluetooth, built-in m.2 / 2.5"
| SSD...I love the SD card reader personally but make it a damn
| good fast one or just give me another couple of USB ports
| instead.
|
| The closest I can get to this today is the Lenovo workstation
| dock, which they now make in a TB4 flavor featuring: 1 x
| 3.5mm Audio combo Jack 4 x USB-A 1 x USB-C 1 x HDMI 2.1 2 x
| Displayport 1.4 1 x RJ45 (gigabit) 1 x Thunderbolt (for Host
| connect) 1 x Thunderbolt (for Device connect)
| pickdan wrote:
| Although this solution doesn't really solve any of the
| fundamental issues with cable rigidity and easy to unplug
| usb-c/tb ports or the continuous "add another abstraction
| layer" problems of the ever expanding complexity of do
| everything on a single cable standard, OWC sells a ClingOn
| adhesive backed usb-c/tb lockable connector which prevents
| my cables from unplugging constantly when the wind blows
| and triggering the "why the hell does my accessory not work
| oh it's unplugged loop". For a mere $5 each!
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| I did see those a while ago! They sadly weren't out when
| I got the original TB3 dock from them when that first
| came out, so no idea how well they work, but seems like
| they might help. IIRC the dock itself tended to generate
| a fair bit of heat, so I wonder how well that adhesive
| really holds up. It'd be great if this was just built
| into the dock, maybe removable in some way if one wanted
| to use a TB3 cable that didn't fit.
| wil421 wrote:
| My caldigit came with the flimsiest TB3 cable I've ever
| used. No issues at all. Even my much stiffer Apple TB cable
| works fine.
| bredren wrote:
| 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.
| varenc wrote:
| Strongly agree with this! I have the now discontinued eGPU
| Pro and it rocks. Is normally completely silent and it
| functions as an actual thunderbolt dock. It's one of the
| few eGGUa with a secondary thunderbolt port you can use
| with a Thunderbolt monitor. (It also supports USB-PD for
| fast charging an iPad). Half the USB-A ports are 5 Gb/s. I
| do wish it had etherneT though.
|
| I also recommend the TS3 Plus, though it's not as rock
| solid. Mine sometimes has a high frequency noise issue when
| the DP port is in use, though your resolution changes the
| hum's volume. Also it freezes up occasionally, but I used
| it for 2 years without many troubles.
| sogen wrote:
| Yeah, I have a Razer Core X eGPU that works really great
| corndoge wrote:
| 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.
| codys wrote:
| I've found https://dancharblog.wordpress.com/2021/02/05/usb
| 4-tb4-docks/ has a nice comparison of the many very similar
| (only slightly differentiated) thunderbolt 4 docks.
|
| It notes that the Kingston, Sonnet, and others are rebrands
| of the Goodway DBD1100.
| corndoge wrote:
| And updated yesterday to boot. This is awesome, thank
| you.
| rektide wrote:
| And it still costs as much as a computer.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| Yeah, after buying a macbook pro I decided to buy an
| earlier generation of macbook air with some usable ports
| on it, there is no way I'm going to go around with an
| additional box. People complain MS is user-hostile but
| Apple does the same, just in their own way.
| zymhan wrote:
| As has often been said, that dock really is a computer.
|
| I don't think that's a good thing though. No adapter/hub
| should be this complex IMO. I don't know how the ubiquity
| of USB got us to this point, it seems worse than before.
| znpy wrote:
| > As has often been said, that dock really is a computer.
|
| No it isn't, lol. Thudernbolt/usb-c docks are a solution
| to a made-up problem.
|
| It is absolutely possible to have all the necessary ports
| on a modern slip laptop.
|
| Just look at the Dell Latitude 7390:
|
| - https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/dell-latitude-7390
|
| - https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-
| Latitude-7390-i5-8350U-SS...
| bluGill wrote:
| Which is great on the road. When I'm in the office using
| my laptop as a desktop I want one plug for everything and
| that is what usb-c gives me, so it is easy to grab just
| the laptop and go. (On my current laptop it is two usb-c
| plugs on one connector as usb-c doesn't allow enough
| power or data for one port to work - I have to use their
| official hub which who knows how long they will make).
| CyberNoodle wrote:
| Made-up problem? Maybe if you use your laptop as a
| desktop and never take it anywhere. I don't want to plug
| in a dozen cables whenever I come home or go to work, or
| after each and every meeting.
| Slaminerag wrote:
| I have a Dell Latitude laptop. It absolutely doesn't have
| enough video ports for the monitors on my desk. And while
| it's got enough ports for my USB peripherals (barely),
| it's certainly a lot more convenient to connect one cable
| than to connect 5-6, when I bring it back from using it
| as a laptop.
| [deleted]
| dylan604 wrote:
| Because it's not USB it's Thunderbolt. Thunderbolt taps
| directly into the PCIe bus where USB doesn't. It only
| makes sense it is going to be much more than just a USB
| switch/hub. It's basically one of those PCIe expansion
| chasis that allowed extra expansion cards when your case
| only had 3 slots. Except, this is a nice neat little box
| on top of your desk.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > Customers: "We want one cable that does everything,
| super fast!"
|
| > Engineers: "Okay... but it's going to be expensive and
| complicated..."
|
| > Apple: "Money is insignificant next to the power of
| user experience."
|
| > Intel: "Oh, people are actually using this thing we
| created?"
|
| > USB-IF: "But us, b..."
|
| > Intel: "So the USB won't let me B. Or let my TB be USB,
| so let me C."
|
| > USB-IF: "You are again our hearts' delight."
|
| > Customers: "Why is this so complicated? Remember when
| one connector meant one kind of cable? Those were great
| days."
|
| And that's how we got here.
| afandian wrote:
| The original LaserWriter had
|
| > Motorola 68000 CPU running at 12 MHz, 512 KB of
| workspace RAM, and a 1 MB frame buffer.
|
| vs the Mac 128K with
|
| > Motorola 68000 microprocessor running at 7.8336 MHz,
| connected to 128 KB RAM shared by the processor and the
| display controller
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaserWriter
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_128K
| ubermonkey wrote:
| I did the same thing, seeking a "one plug" setup with my
| Macbook Pro. I have a different CalDigit (the TS3+), but same
| conclusion: to do this right, you have to throw a little money
| at it.
|
| With this dock, I was able to run:
|
| - 2 4K monitors - Gigabit Ethernet - USB-A - Audio connection
| for speakers - Power
|
| all on one USB-C cable to the laptop. It also has an SD slot
| and a front-facing USB-A port for thumb drives, etc.
|
| https://www.caldigit.com/ts3-plus/
| Sophistifunk wrote:
| For the sake of anecdata, I have a CalDigit TB3 dock that's
| been working _reasonably well_ for a few years now, which is
| actually pretty high praise given the competition, and I 'll
| probably stick with CD when I get around to replacing it.
| DocG wrote:
| How is 50-90EUR not a "bit of money" for a dongle already?
| wil421 wrote:
| No Ethernet? I would stick to the TS3 plus. I love mine.
| k8sToGo wrote:
| Yes. Avoid anything with displaylink.
| LocalPCGuy wrote:
| I don't like the idea of having to chain multiple dongles(I
| know the advantages, being able to choose a good network
| adapter, etc.) but I'd still pay decent money for a single
| device that I can leave on my desk with everything plugged in
| without the need for additional interconnects. (I do see that
| they make actual hubs as well, might check those out.)
| [deleted]
| guerby wrote:
| I've recently received my https://frame.work laptop (64 GB RAM
| 2 TB NVME) and with its expansion card system I can have 4
| usb-c, or 2 usb-c and HDMI and DP on it, and if a connector
| fails the replacement expansion card is 10-20 EUR.
| morninglight wrote:
| My kid wanted a USB hub, so I got this at the local $5 store.
| Have not heard any complaints. I am sooo lucky.
|
| https://www.fivebelow.com/products/4-port-type-c-charging-hu...
| Nextgrid wrote:
| That's USB 2 though - it's literally a USB-A hub with the
| connector swapped for a USB-C one. This speaks volumes about
| the beauty of USB 2.0 and the USB-A specs that they withstood
| decades of unscrupulous manufacturers; they're so simple that
| it's literally more effort to screw it up than to do it
| properly, so even the cheapest option will typically work.
| morninglight wrote:
| I know that, and you know that, and by the time my kid
| figures it out....
|
| I'll have saved enough to send him to College.
|
| .
| appletrotter wrote:
| Top 5 usb C hacks that your kids don't want you to know.
|
| Hack 1. Gas light your children ...
| danuker wrote:
| While I don't approve of gaslighting, I endorse the use
| of appropriate technology.
|
| Since "real" USB-C hubs seem to be garbage, why use one?
| dogma1138 wrote:
| You can get them on the cheap as you can buy enterprise Dell/HP
| USB-C/TB for like $50-70 on EBay...
|
| Do not waste your money on high end consumer stuff, the
| enterprise stuff is better and the market is flooded with
| disposed units...
| Gigachad wrote:
| Those Dell ones that come with the XPS caused us endless
| problems at work. Higher res screens would just not work
| properly. The only one that consistently just worked was the
| apple HDMI/USB-A/USB-C charging dongle.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| Sounds to me that you for some reason got the older USB-C
| 3.1 / Gen 1 docks those are limited to 5gbps which means no
| 4K@60 the Gen 2 USB-C / TB3 docks work quite flawlessly as
| long as you ofc plug them into a Gen 2 or TB port...
| ungamedplayer wrote:
| This echos the same problem that I had with the older
| Lenovo "docks" (hub). The newer ones work without an
| issue.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| They should be able to get 4k@60 with the older docks. I
| have such an older monitor which works fine. It's just
| that the usb 3 ports work at 480 Mbps.
| vetinari wrote:
| With USB->DP adapter yes. With a hub offering USB3 ports,
| mostly no. Once both lanes are in DP-alternate mode
| (needed for 4k@60), there's no bandwidth for USB3, only
| the separate wire for USB2. So here it depends how it is
| internally connected, and whether it can switch USB3
| ports to USB2 or not. Many hubs can't do this.
| chevman wrote:
| I'd second this.
|
| Work in a large F50 and all the enterprise grade ones we've
| had are decent.
|
| This is the current model they are giving folks:
|
| https://us.targus.com/products/usb-c-universal-
| dv4k-docking-...
|
| I've been running an Intel MacBook Pro (last intel version I
| think) on it the last few months with 2 external HP displays,
| keyboard, mouse, and it is a solid performer.
| lsaferite wrote:
| As another commenter stated, bleh to DisplayLink. Also,
| what monster designed it so 1! of the 4 USB-A ports is
| upside down? This is why we cannot have nice things.
| danieldk wrote:
| Argh, DisplayLink :(.
|
| https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/usb-graphics-
| adapter,30...
| Joeri wrote:
| Yes, those displaylink docks are fine for office
| productivity work, but not that suitable for gaming or
| media consumption because of the cpu load. On the other
| hand, I plugged my m1 air into one at work and the cpu
| load was reasonable even while videoconferencing, so I
| suppose eventually the overhead of displaylink gets small
| enough not to be a problem.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Remind me to never buy a laptop without a healthy array of
| dedicated external ports. This is lunacy.
| jfb wrote:
| I get around this by using a desktop computer. I appreciate
| without wanting the engineering that goes into modern
| laptops; but they're solving for a problem that I just don't
| have.
|
| USB remains, of course, a donkey circus. Everyone involved in
| USB ought to be ashamed of themselves.
| Xenixo wrote:
| I love my USBc with hub setup.
|
| Sure this is relatively new and a ton of hubs are shit but
| this will only become better.
|
| I can use my Anker mini dock on my laptop, switch and Samsung
| s22.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| Yup when you see both the price _and_ the size of these
| docks, you gotta wonder why even bother with buying a laptop
| in the first place. If the goal is to hook up two 4K
| monitors, I 'd rather have, say, a desktop computer powered
| by a threadripper.
| michaelgrafl wrote:
| I have multiple desks. Each of them has their own docking
| station.
|
| The only things that move around are my laptop and I. I
| don't want to carry around a desktop computer and plug in
| power, screens, and USB hub every time I switch desks.
| dspillett wrote:
| _> why even bother with buying a laptop in the first place.
| If the goal is to hook up two 4K monitors_
|
| That might not be a full-time goal. Some want a machine
| that works on the move but can be expanded to bigger
| screens and such when at certain locations (office and/or
| home). A laptop and dock allow this compromise.
|
| It _is_ a compromise, not one suitable for all. But it is
| the list inconvenient option for many.
| sho wrote:
| > Some want a machine that works on the move but can be
| expanded to bigger screens and such when at certain
| locations
|
| I wouldn't say "some". Probably 90% of developers I know
| require exactly this, in fact off the top of my head I
| can't think of any who don't. Even the permanent, full-
| remote, no-really-there-is-literally-no-office types want
| to sit in a different room sometimes or work from a
| coffee shop.
|
| It's pretty rare to have a "workstation" setup that
| cannot be moved.
| moffkalast wrote:
| I guess I'm one of those devs that you can't think of
| then. Main rig for remote work at home, laptop for the
| occasional trip to the lab. Honestly I can't imagine
| using a laptop for anything too demanding, the shitty
| thermals make me cringe.
| katbyte wrote:
| Personally I like having a laptop for on the go and a
| desktop that's always in one place and use syncing to
| make it pretty seemless to switch between them.
| d1sxeyes wrote:
| That's a good solution, but it comes with its own set of
| compromises. I think the argument here really is:
|
| '... where we came in. Having to buy an external dock is
| such a compromise! I want to have all the ports on my
| laptop!'
|
| 'But if all your peripherals are connected directly, you
| need to connect and disconnect them every time, so you
| have to compromise on mobility. Isn't this...'
|
| And different variations on this same spiral.
| fastball wrote:
| Presumably people have a dedicated workstation that they
| use most of the time, but not infrequently want to have a
| portable computer that they can take places
| (cafes/trips/transport/co-working spaces/etc).
|
| I find it surprising that the appeal of the above would be
| confusing for anyone.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Well, I mean, 2 4k monitors is possible on a laptop in
| laptop configuration these days (4k internal + 4k add-on
| attached slide-out), so I don't see why it's an
| unreasonable thing to have where you dock a laptop.
|
| Sure, you could buy a separate desktop for that, but if you
| also go portable, don't want to bother with some kind of
| online sync solution, and want to move between laptop mode
| for on the go and something docked to big monitors and a no
| laptop keyboard/mouse for when you are at your primary
| workspace, getting a good laptop plus a dock rather than
| spending more for a laptop plus a separate desktop which
| makes you have to compromise on syncing somehow makes a lot
| of sense.
|
| (Obviously, if you need desktop processing power, thermal
| envelopes mean that laptops aren't going to be competitive.
| But if that's your need, you aren't going to be looking at
| laptops, and how to connect peripherals isn't going to be
| your limiting factor.)
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| Yeah, the thing too about desktop vs laptop is not just
| core count but TDP. An Intel 12900K on an OC can draw like
| 400W ( https://wccftech.com/intel-
| core-i9-12900k-overclocked-to-5-3... ) vs a laptop that
| will get you a max of like 115w for turbo (<10 seconds at a
| time) and 45w under normal circumstances ( https://ark.inte
| l.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/132215/... ).
|
| And good luck getting anything close to RTX 3090Ti
| performance in a laptop. It'd basically be a toasted oven
| on your lap.
|
| Desktops can just sink a ton more heat, and as process
| shrinks and die size increases have gotten us less and less
| additional performance each year, we're just pushing power
| up to the point now where a TOTL gaming desktop is pulling
| close to 1KW. A laptop will never come close. If you really
| do want to try a literal desktop CPU in a laptop, there are
| mfgs like Eurocom and Sager that will sell you one, just
| don't expect it not to throttle a lot under actual heavy
| workloads.
| roywashere wrote:
| To be honest I see this as a win for laptops nowadays. I
| still work from home most days of the week and I prefer
| not to have a power hungry workstation turned on all day,
| especially with current electricity prices. Because of
| unfortunate timing of when my contract expired I already
| pay around 800 euros per month for energy
| gambiting wrote:
| >>Because of unfortunate timing of when my contract
| expired I already pay around 800 euros per month for
| energy
|
| Wait, what? Are you like cryptomining or something?
| That's actually insane. I charge two electric cars at
| home, work from home using a powerful workstation, and my
| electricity is about PS100/month. How do you manage to
| spend 800 euro a month????
| roywashere wrote:
| No I am not crypto mining. Please mind I said 'energy',
| it includes gas. Electric is about 175 euros
| maccard wrote:
| Curious where you are? I run a threadripper workstation
| with a 3070Ti and 2x 1440p monitors for ~10 hours per
| day, and my household's electricity bill is ~PS40/month.
| XorNot wrote:
| Yes, but companies keep wanting me to use the corporate
| laptop, not my much more capable desktop on a dedicated
| drive. So technically a good dock is not a bad investment
| in that scenario since you aren't paying for the laptop.
| tokamak-teapot wrote:
| MacBook Air with two USB-C ports:
|
| One for USB-C to Ethernet adapter.
|
| One for Apple adapter that I plug USB-C power into, plus
| HDMI, plus a mouse.
|
| Always works. Though it can't prevent me forgetting to plug
| the Ethernet adapter in and realising I've been on wifi all
| day.
| [deleted]
| theshrike79 wrote:
| I swap between three different computers. Everything is
| attached to the same dock.
|
| I just need to swap the USB-C connector between the three and
| I get the same displays and peripherals.
|
| Doing this with a "healthy array of external ports" would be
| a huge pain in the ass.
| seszett wrote:
| You could do it the same if you had an array of ports (as
| long as one of them is USB-C). You would just _also_ have
| the possibility to use the other ports without a hub.
| moffkalast wrote:
| This guy gets it, more is always better.
| binkHN wrote:
| Because of the crazy pricing of CPUs nowadays, I'm still
| going old school with a slightly older ThinkPad and a
| ThinkPad docking station that decidedly does not connect via
| USB and uses a proprietary port underneath the laptop. For
| the most part, everything works well and has been doing so
| for years.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| It's weird how people want to plug lots of things in at home,
| but not very many when traveling, isn't it?
| gumby wrote:
| 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.
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| 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.
| moffkalast wrote:
| You seriously never needed to plug in a plain common
| USB-A flash drive or any other peripheral? Or flash an sd
| card or anything of the sort? Interesting.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| Or just an external keyboard...
|
| I'm using a BT mouse explicitly not to bother with a
| stupid "2.4GHz USB Receiver" and keep one (USB-A!) port
| free.
| gumby wrote:
| Nope. I pass data around over the network, either via
| cloud or P2P. If I plug into an external display I use BT
| kbd/trackpad. And I do have a waterproof/shockproof
| camera with an SD card but I don't use it every day, or
| even every week; I use my phone.
|
| Flash drive? Hardly ever used one; networking existed
| before they were invented.
| weq wrote:
| Im a non-FAANG developer so i cant comment on what all
| the sheep/ad devs are doing;
|
| but I can comment on what a polygot cross-platform cross-
| cloud software engineer who supports a plethora of native
| portable devices integrations require, and thats USB hubs
| with ports coming out the ye-ha - otherwise im constantly
| playing musical chairs.
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| I'm not a FAANG dev either, but no need to disparage
| them. That seems inappropriate and mean spirited.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| The thing about a plain old USB hub is that it only costs
| $20-30.
|
| It's a nice way to avoid the lunacy here.
| gumby wrote:
| I commented that I didn't have a need a lot of ports with
| my use case and you commented that you did with yours.
| Good HN discussion.
|
| But why did you have to begin your comment with the
| condescending "all the sheep/ad devs"? It makes you look
| insecure and I only read beyond that because your comment
| was so brief.
|
| There are machines with lots of ports and machines with
| few and someone's choice of which to use is not a moral
| judgement.
| michaelgrafl wrote:
| My laptop has enough ports. But I don't want to plug them all
| out and in again when taking it from one desk to another one.
| moffkalast wrote:
| This thread is making me think there is some breed of
| programmer out there that has 8 work desks in their house
| and switches between them sequentially every 5 minutes.
| Asmod4n wrote:
| Is there any dock wich supports freesync, hdr, >120 hz via DP or
| HDMI? Got the usb-c gen 2 dock from Lenovo which claims hdmi 2.0
| and dp 1.4 support but can't do any of it.
|
| It also has issues with sleep and device swapping for random
| devices not to wake up or a ,,stalled" Ethernet Port when doing
| Teams meetings.
|
| Updating the firmware didn't help.
| alx__ wrote:
| Yeah I've been playing this game for the past two years with the
| MacBook Pro.
|
| Most work fine for a minute and then after a few months seems to
| get cranky and some input will start failing :/
|
| Currently using that Anker hub mentioned. Probably the best of
| the bunch but that's not saying much. Lots of little annoyances.
|
| One thing I found was putting the low powered USB A devices on a
| smaller hub "stick" that's USB-C and daisy chained to the Anker
| one. This has been the most stable setup.
|
| But usually about twice a month stability will wane I'll have to
| unplug everything, restart computer and then plug them all back
| in one by one.
| whichdan wrote:
| I'm currently waiting to get a Dell UltraSharp 27" 4K U2723QE
| delivered. It's ~$630 and has a USB 3.2 Gen2 Hub:
|
| - HDMI 2.2
|
| - DisplayPort 1.4 Input
|
| - DisplayPort 1.4 Output
|
| - USB-C Upstream (PD 90W + DP 1.4 Alt Mode)
|
| - USB-C Upstream (KVM)
|
| - USB-C Downstream
|
| - 5x USB-A Downstream
|
| - Audio line-out
|
| - LAN (RJ-45)
|
| As far as I can tell it has the best connectivity and specs of
| any mainstream consumer monitor under $1k. It really doesn't feel
| worth it to spend $250-400 on a dock given the price point of
| these monitors.
|
| It also doesn't have a power brick, which makes cable management
| a bit easier too.
|
| https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-ultrasharp-27-4k-u...
| bzzzt wrote:
| I've got that one at a steep discount. Works great on a MacBook
| using 1 USB-C cable for charging, network and display. The only
| downside is on laptops without Displayport stream compression
| there's not enough bandwidth for 4k@60Hz and USB3 5Gbps so you
| have to choose 30Hz or USB2.
| exabrial wrote:
| I have a question, why is there not trust "USB switch"es (akin to
| a usb 2.0 hub) available? Like something that takes one usb-c
| port and makes multiple usb-c ports?
| somethoughts wrote:
| It feels like Apple should have done/should do an official in-
| house docking system instead of outsourcing such a critical
| component in the overall system/value proposition.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Actually they have a simple USB-C break-out adapter which has a
| USB-A port, an HDMI port and power-in. It works extremely well.
| You can connect it to a USB3.0 hub to get a lot of ports. I
| leave it at my office desk for day to day operation.
|
| If you want a proper docking station, a higher end Dell monitor
| [0] will do with USB-C, display daisy chain and USB-PD. It'll
| enable single cable connectivity to anything you care, sans
| ethernet, which can be attached to the monitor's USB hub, if
| you really need.
|
| For my mobility needs, I use a Kingston Nucleum [1] since I
| don't care about Ethernet, but about fast card readers. It also
| supports 60W USB-PD, which is ample for a MacBook Air M1. That
| thing is really high quality.
|
| [0]: https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-
| ultrasharp-27-4k-u...
|
| [1]: https://www.kingston.com/en/memory-card-readers/nucleum-
| usb-...
| jd3 wrote:
| This is the ideal setup, imo. I know it's pricey due to the
| Apple markup, but I just expensed it through my job.
|
| https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MUF82AM/A/usb-c-
| digital-a...
|
| https://www.apple.com/shop/product/HJKF2ZM/A/belkin-usb-c-
| to...
|
| https://us.anker.com/products/a7516?variant=40237697171606
| valleyjo wrote:
| The newest Dell monitors have Ethernet built in. I just got a
| 16:10 U3023 and have been using it a hub / dock. No issues
| yet.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| There's nothing like having to do Johnny Mnemonic cosplay
| because a manufacturer won't let their product be sullied
| with holes.
| bayindirh wrote:
| I don't think a MacBook Air M1 has a lot places to add
| ports [0]. The latest generation of MacBook Pros bring a
| lot of the ports back [1], so that point doesn't hold
| anymore.
|
| Also, of all the MacBook Air users I know, I'm the heaviest
| user in terms of processor load, and given that it's the
| company computer, it wouldn't be my first choice for a
| personal MacBook (in fact, I have a personal MacBook Pro).
|
| At the end of the day, having a featherweight computer
| which can do all my work related tasks and some heavier
| stuff and doesn't needs its charger and ports most of the
| time is really a spoiling thing. However, for heavy
| development and photographic work, nothing beats on board
| ports and a bigger screen.
|
| [0]: https://www.apple.com/v/macbook-
| air/n/images/specs/mba_charg...
|
| [1]: https://images.macrumors.com/t/MsiVifkTbdhdqh2z2tvJZXI
| uH80=/...
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Looks like there's enough room for USB A ports to me.
| They're not massively thicker.
|
| HDMI would require curving the bottom differently but
| would easily fit in a laptop of that thickness.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Reporting from my MacBook Air M1, there's actually not
| enough thickness. The (male) plug itself is as thick as
| the side of the laptop. Considering the (female) socket's
| size & surrounding machinery, the Air needs to be at
| least 20% thicker to accommodate a USB-A port.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| The back edge is more than twice as thick as a USB C
| opening, which is 2.65mm. Unless this picture is wrong,
| that should be visibly thicker than an A plug...
|
| But whatever, whether it fits or not with the current
| molding, the _laptop_ does not need to be thicker to fit
| those ports. It just needs to change the curve near the
| back. Look how thick the middle is between the ports it
| has. That 's way more than enough. Thickness including
| screen peaks at 16mm.
| bayindirh wrote:
| > Unless this picture is wrong, that should be visibly
| thicker than an A plug...
|
| Just re-measured with a USB flash drive and an actual
| MacBook Air M1 (which I'm actually typing this comment
| on), and it's not. Do you want a photograph with a
| caliper?
|
| > But whatever, whether it fits or not with the current
| molding, the laptop does not need to be thicker to fit
| those ports. It just needs to change the curve near the
| back. Look how thick the middle is between the ports it
| has. That's way more than enough. Thickness including
| screen peaks at 16mm.
|
| Actually, you can see in [0], there's no space to fit a
| full depth, full height USB-A port inside there. You need
| to make the machine definitely thicker to accommodate
| that ports, given all the shielding a USB-A port around
| it [1]. This is a listing for a straight port. You'll
| probably need a 90 degree version in a MacBook Pro,
| unless apple does something ingenious.
|
| [0]: https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/eIi44fP1cl
| anGHWQ.f...
|
| [1]: https://sa.rsdelivers.com/product/wurth-
| elektronik/692121430...
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I don't understand what your first picture is supposed to
| show.
|
| But let's go back to the side view you first linked.
| Would you really say that this distance is too shallow
| for a USB A port? https://i.imgur.com/OtqDMh1.png It's
| more than a centimeter.
| bayindirh wrote:
| The first image I shared is an underside of an M1 MacBook
| Air, cover removed. I attached it to show how insanely
| cramped inside.
|
| The machine reaches that thickness under the keyboard.
| Around the middle Torx screw holding the screen hinges on
| the top of the image.You can of course carry the
| thickness like the MacBook Pros to the edge, but there
| are other problems.
|
| USB-A ports are a bit thicker than the opening
| themselves. A proper, high quality port has some spring
| loaded shielding pressing towards the port opening and it
| flares out, Also, 90 degree ports have some distance
| between the port body and contacts, since you need to fix
| the port to the board via quite a few pins (9 pins on
| electronic side, plus at least two for retention, unless
| you clamp in down via a retainer, which needs screws,
| etc).
|
| All of this "machinery" adds quite a space required to
| implement a USB-A port on a board. As you can see in the
| article itself, the hubs themselves use "through the
| board, unflared" ports to minimize space use as much as
| possible, and none of them are very slim.
|
| The slimmest USB 3.0 hub I've seen is from Anker [0][1],
| which I also use almost daily. As you can see, you need
| to have that slack around that port. Same port on a
| laptop needs same amount of slack around [2][3]. My older
| MacBook Pro also has similar amount of slack around its
| USB-A ports.
|
| All in all, a MacBook Air doesn't have the thickness and
| space to include that port, in its current form. We're
| always talking about thickness, but insertion depth is at
| least 15%-20% greater for USB-A too. Plus you need the
| depth required for supporting the pins on the plug side.
| That needs to be taken into account, too.
|
| [0]: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0493/9834/9974/pro
| ducts/An...
|
| [1]: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0493/9834/9974/pro
| ducts/A7...
|
| [2]: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16131/a-15inch-thin-
| laptop-fo...
|
| [3]: https://images.anandtech.com/doci/16131/2.png
| ydkme wrote:
| smoldesu wrote:
| I actually agree. Normally I'm against proprietary ports, but
| vendors that have done this in the past have traditionally
| killed a lot of birds with one stone. Both Dell and Lenovo's
| docking solutions are fantastic, and don't require expensive
| hardware to manufacture docks. As a result, you can get the
| full IO of your computer extended to a dock with 10+ ports for
| less than $30. Pretty great solution IMO.
| zamadatix wrote:
| The downside is all of the hardware ends up inside the laptop
| where you still pay for it and now can't upgrade it
| separately or reuse it with another laptop. Not that I ever
| remember Dell/Lenovo docks being $30 new anyways.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| And if one of the tiny wires breaks and causes a short, not
| only can you cause a fire but you also damage the connector
| in the laptop which can only be fixed by replacing the
| motherboard, which is more expensive than the laptop itself
| and not covered by warranty.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Yeah, I don't think I'd ever call it a perfect solution.
| FWIW though, I think most of the implementations I've seen
| leverage the preexisting I/O controllers on the laptop
| itself, which means the only added cost is whatever the
| proprietary docking connector costs on the BOM.
| somethoughts wrote:
| I remember I did receive a Dell dock complete with a spring
| mounted adapter for the actual laptop.
|
| I wasn't thinking that though - I was thinking something
| like the ones reviewed in the article but perhaps with a
| Apple Thunderbolt connector to prevent them from having to
| support Windows PC users.
| zamadatix wrote:
| You can get e.g. a Dell PR02X (traditional docking
| station/port replicator) for $30 or less the last couple
| of years now that they aren't compatible with new models
| but they used to also be upwards of $100 new before that
| ~5 years ago. There was a similar price decrease story
| after the prior generation of proprietary dock was
| deprecated as well and you'd see the same thing if the
| current type-C USB/Thunderbolt docks were replaced with a
| new physical interface. Has nothing to do with the
| hardware design and everything to do with excess
| inventory of an old product.
|
| There is no such thing as "Apple Thunderbolt" just
| "Thunderbolt". It was developed by Intel, Apple was
| involved early in development with Intel and first to
| market >10 years ago but that's it. Most Windows laptops
| come with Thunderbolt and both Dell/Lenovo offer
| Thunderbolt Docks just as much as USB-C docks. Being
| Thunderbolt or not has no impact on whether or not the
| dock will support Windows/Linux vs macOS.
| tossoutaccimade wrote:
| Totally agree. I keep a dock for my thinkpad t420 hooked up
| to 2 27" 1440p iMacs in target display mode. Pop it in, the
| imacs get my laptop's workspaces. I keep a dell laptop docked
| to my tv as a streaming box. Both of these setups give me no
| trouble, and all of these things were being thrown out by my
| university.
| rhinoceraptor wrote:
| Technically they have one, it's built into the displays.
| Obviously it's not a great solution if you want to use your
| existing monitors.
| moduspol wrote:
| They do--they just include the monitor as part of it. That
| seems to have been the vision since at least 2011 [1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Thunderbolt_Display
| btgeekboy wrote:
| That was discontinued over 6 years ago. In 2022, it isn't a
| great monitor, either.
| moduspol wrote:
| They do have a replacement consumer monitor in 2022 [1],
| but in the meantime, they were selling and supporting the
| LG UltraFine 5K [2].
|
| I haven't bought the new studio display, but the
| Thunderbolt Display was great and the LG UltraFine 5K is,
| too. Used both as daily drivers (and docking stations) for
| years. I only haven't bought the new one because that LG
| one is still going strong.
|
| Regardless: my point is that this certainly seems to be
| "the vision." You don't need a docking station because your
| monitor functions as one. If I had to guess, they probably
| think normal people don't want to buy a docking station and
| then deal with a series of poorly-integrated peripherals.
|
| [1] https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/apple-studio-
| display/stan... [2] https://support.apple.com/en-
| us/HT210205
| tristor wrote:
| I've been through this rodeo myself. I've been happily using for
| years docks made by Hyper over USB-C (and now over TB4). When on
| the go, I use the official Apple dongle for HDMI and USB. If I
| need more ports, Hyper and Anker both make USB-C hubs that are
| very solid and actually work.
|
| I totally agree with the author, most of the products on the
| market are garbage, and many are the same garbage with different
| names. To a large degree to solve this issue you need to stop
| shopping on Amazon. Almost everything listed on Amazon not made
| by Anker doesn't work. Either buy directly for Apple, or buy from
| directly from small companies that focus on solving accessories
| for the Apple market (e.g. Rain Design, 12South, Hyper, CalDigit,
| et al). This is definitely not limited to USB-C hubs, and
| encompasses nearly all products. Buying direct from high-quality
| companies is always better than trying your luck with random
| brand-named Aliexpress specials sold through Amazon.
| rcthompson wrote:
| I've found the Macbook hubs from Hyper to be quite reliable
| over the years. And in addition, they're the only ones that can
| output to 2 monitors at once (one TB3 port, one HDMI) with a
| reasonable resolution and refresh rate, AND allow you to plug a
| charger into the non-TB3 Type C port. I haven't found anything
| else with similar specs in the same form factor.
| austhrow743 wrote:
| Or if you don't want to fork out for premium products, at least
| go straight to aliexpress and pay cheap prices for your cheap
| products.
| trauco wrote:
| The Satechi one creates "broadcast storms" [1] that messed up my
| home network if left it unplugged from the computer but powered
| on and with the ethernet cable connected.
|
| I have an Anker one now, I guess I should expect the same.
|
| I also have a Dell D6000, which is rarely reviewed but has been
| solid.
|
| [1]
| https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/an3nyf/pass_thoug...
| logbiscuitswave wrote:
| I had the exact same issue from a Thinkpad docking station. A
| later firmware update for the dock seemed to fix this.
|
| Was it ever frustrating though trying to figure out why my
| network would randomly decide to just crap out.
| danieldk wrote:
| I have the same experience with the Lenovo USB-C Dock Gen 2
| (also uses a Realtek NIC). It would knock out our router (or
| maybe, I can't recall, the router would just block my NIC).
| SnowflakeOnIce wrote:
| I saw this too from a Satechi hub! When connected to power and
| Ethernet but not a computer, it would crash my home network
| switch, requiring a power cycle on that. Maddening.
| LocalPCGuy wrote:
| I had similar issues with one of these USB-C hubs (not sure if
| it was Satechi or just a similar PCB inside) - just shutting
| the lid of my laptop was enough to cause it to start going nuts
| but only after the Mac actually stopped talking to the hub at
| all. That was a fun one to figure out, I'd lose internet some
| small period of time (but not always the same amount) after
| switching from my work Mac to my PC, both hardwired.
| InTheArena wrote:
| And sadly, I own two out of three of those.
|
| It's worth noting that the Realtek is crap, even ignoring the OSX
| driver situation. I have a few of the 2.5GBe dongles to make my
| synology speak 2.5gb/s (because a modern NAS is 2020 should have
| more then gigabit, but doens't because reasons). The driver in
| Linux is hot mess. I seem to have much more luck then some with
| it.
| jandrese wrote:
| Realtek chips have been garbage since the 90s. But they have
| also been the cheapest option for just as long so you see them
| absolutely everywhere, especially with third party accessories.
| It is typical to see hardware errata documents several pages
| thick from them, if they provide support at all. Getting the
| drivers working well is pure masochism as you have to deal with
| the terrible documentation (if you have it at all) and the
| abysmal quality of the hardware.
|
| But they have turned their garbage products into a multi-
| billion dollar company and that's all that really matters in
| the world of business.
|
| Whichever chip is the cheapest is the one that every accessory
| maker will use. It is rare that a company can break through
| with a product that advertises higher quality components but at
| a higher price, or they end up with such a massive premium on
| what should be a modest increase in BoM that the value
| proposition still doesn't make sense.
|
| As a sidenote this is exactly what I expected to happen as
| laptop manufacturers started aggressively cutting ports from
| their machines. You have to switch to dongles, but dongles
| _suck_ and the total experience is much worse than having a
| laptop that is 2mm thicker.
| ridiculous_fish wrote:
| Do you know of any alternative to the RTL8153 (1Gbe) and
| RTL8156 (2.5GBe) chips? The only competitors seems to be
| AQC111U, which appear to not be supported on ARM Macs, and
| AX88179 whose support appears spotty as well. Any experience
| with either?
| danieldk wrote:
| A Thunderbolt dock or adapter that puts the NIC on the PCI-E
| bus, like Apple's Thunderbolt 2 Ethernet adapter (which
| annoyingly requires a Thunderbolt 2 -> 3 adapter). I know
| that some Thunderbolt docks also use Intel NICs, but I don't
| have one of these, so I cannot recommend any model.
| hvs wrote:
| We've only had any luck with Elgato Thunderbolt (not just USB-C)
| hubs with Macs. Everything else has had issues.
| filoleg wrote:
| is it just me or is Elgato Thunderbolt 3 Pro case looks pretty
| much exactly like Belkin Thunderbolt 3 Dock Pro case[0] (with
| the main difference between Belkin having a USB-C port
| replacing one of the USB-A ports, and the SD card reader and
| headphone jack being left-right swapped)? It looks the same
| even down to the curves and materials/colors, and even the
| naming is that close.
|
| No complaints about the quality of the product btw, I have been
| using one myself for almost 2 years. I just found it pretty
| interesting that even the most recommended hub ends up
| potentially being just as suspect in terms of "who made it".
|
| 0. https://www.belkin.com/us/business/hubs-and-docks-for-
| busine...
| hadlock wrote:
| I bought a Lenovo "Thinkpad" branded Thunderbolt 3 dock, uh, in
| 2017 and it's been flawless since I got it. They even released a
| firmware update for it a couple months ago! Sure I paid an arm
| and a leg for it, about $220 five years ago, but I haven't had
| any issues with it so maybe the price was worth it.
| joeman1000 wrote:
| It _is_ super frustrating that it's basically impossible to find
| good tech (in some categories). How is the author surprised about
| this though? Surely they knew about white-label alibaba tech,
| right? It is almost impossible to avoid it. It's been this way
| for _at least_ 5 years. I can pick a 'white-label' product by
| sight now. I suggest everyone develops the same intuition and
| avoids these disappointments.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > It is almost impossible to avoid it.
|
| I am doing these Type-C hubs, and other small stuff peripherals
| for a living.
|
| My suggestion, don't look stuff retail, and don't look big
| brands, even Dell.
|
| Pretty much any _" brand business"_ had _zero_ RnD. Their only
| feedback channel is the RMA rate. If it gets _too_ bad, they
| just change the supplier.
|
| Instead, I really suggest going the other way. Smaller makers
| have no money for big marketing, nor buying ready designs, so
| they hire people, and let them work until they make something
| _sellable_.
|
| House brands often have better QC, because they are already
| very constrained by their pricing, and RMA will kill them.
| Thus, they have incentive to spend few extra thousand dollars
| in engineer work hours than to deal with $100k in returns
| themselves.
| code_biologist wrote:
| What is an example house brand? Amazon? I understand your
| reasoning and it makes sense, but I'm not sure what brands
| that actually means, or how to find them.
| baybal2 wrote:
| npteljes wrote:
| Can you please suggest some examples for brand business, and
| small makers? I'd like to compare them for contrast bit I
| don't know where to start. Particularly I don't seem to be
| able to distinguish rebranded whitelabels and actual small
| makers.
| baybal2 wrote:
| joeman1000 wrote:
| But the white-label stuff is so popular _because_ it's a
| ready-made product. Benefits (compared to DIY) include:
|
| + No RnD costs (staff and space, failed designs, prototyping)
|
| + No plant and equipment required
|
| + Smaller number of units required initially (no other
| outlays, so the number you _have_ to sell is smaller)
|
| + Smaller time between investment and return
|
| Negatives:
|
| + No innovation in the product
|
| + No control over manufacturing (quality, methods & materials
| used)
|
| + Higher risk of returns from customers (can't control
| quality)
|
| + Higher risk of hurting or killing customers (product
| malfunction)
|
| + Loss of reputation due to the above three points (well
| deserved)
|
| + Inability to update design based on feedback
|
| + No control over price. You are at the mercy of your people
| in China after you're established.
|
| + more. It's a shitty practice if I'm brutally honest.
|
| My point is: those upsides are appealing to _both_ big and
| small players. No big upfront costs? I can just whack a label
| on a shiny piece of shit and make 2x ROI? Sweet! Reputation?
| Couldn't care less, I'm small-time and can switch up if
| anything hits the fan.
| fatnoah wrote:
| When work from home started, I went down this road of madness,
| and have a drawer full of docks that didn't work properly for my
| Macbook (properly is defined as works as a USB hub, connection to
| wired network, charges my Macbook, and lets me connect an
| external 4k display @ 60Hz). A Plugable Thunderbolt 3 Dock has
| carried me for 2 years so far.
| kurthr wrote:
| I am assuming you're using Caldigit? I've had good enough luck,
| I'd consider their TS4 hub.
| fatnoah wrote:
| The brand of my dock is Plugable.
| olyjohn wrote:
| I also have a Plugable TB3 dock. I don't know if it's the dock,
| or the laptop... but MacOS won't remember my monitor layout at
| all. Even if the computer just goes to sleep, it wakes up and
| forgets my monitor layout. Gotta fix it multiple times a day
| sometimes. Sometimes one of the monitors doesn't show up at
| all, and I gotta unplug and plug it back in. Sometimes doing
| that, the computer will actually get the proper monitor layout
| on like the 4th try.
| mgillett wrote:
| I used to have this problem with my Plugable dock and managed
| to permanently fix it by changing the orientation of the
| USB-C cable. The pins are not perfectly symmetric, and some
| devices don't handle one orientation correctly. You might
| have luck experimenting with the rotation.
| fatnoah wrote:
| Interesting. I have no issues like that. I've even changed
| jobs, so I'm actually on my second Macbook with this hub, and
| my Mac remembers window positions and monitor layouts every
| time (knocking on wood so I don't jinx myself). I rarely
| power all the way down, so usually it's usually just sleep
| mode for me. I am using the USB-C connection for the monitor
| if that makes a difference.
| radicality wrote:
| Also have the Pluggable tb3 dock and use 2 external monitors
| via it (+ another separate monitor).
|
| What you described sometimes happens to me too, but
| definitely not multiple times a day.
|
| If you don't have it yet, I recommend purchasing SwitchResX
| software, as Apple's own display management tool is garbage.
| What you can do is create custom "Display Sets" which are
| arrangements of monitors and custom settings/resolutions
| which you can then turn on/off. Ocassionaly a monitor will
| disappear, but then doing a "Detect Displays" in SwitchResX
| usually fixes it for me. That software has largely made a lot
| of my monitor issues like saving layouts go away.
| iblaine wrote:
| I also have a Plugable Thunderbolt 3 Dock, currently powering
| two displays
| iblaine wrote:
| I had 4 monitors going w/Plugable products. I've since gone
| down to 2 and I would recommend Plugable to anyone looking for
| dual monitors on a mac.
| Falell wrote:
| My understanding is that the problem with high
| bandwidth/resolution setups over displayport (which may not be
| your use case) is _in your mac_ , not in your hub. Older
| comment thread here
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29214726
| fatnoah wrote:
| I'm totally not suprised by this. I'm using USB-C between the
| hub and the monitor, and that seems to be working fine, so I
| basically haven't thought too much about it.
| vinhboy wrote:
| > It honestly feels like no matter what you buy, you get more or
| less the same hardware, and you're most likely getting a heavily
| overpriced product just because some company printed their logo
| on it.
|
| Isn't this like a known thing? Almost all peripherals on Amazon
| will have dozens of the exact same form-factor with different
| logos on it. You just buy the one that is the perfect
| intersection of costs, positive reviews, and shipping time. The
| assumption is that they all come from the same factory in China
| anyways.
| ugjka wrote:
| if you go for cheap, you might get someone selling stuff with
| manufacturing defects
| asdff wrote:
| Usually you will see that in the reviews. Depending on the
| defect rate, stars will drop accordingly I find.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Problem basing on reviews is that people mostly only review
| when they receive and test the product for the first time.
|
| Not many will bother finding the item and review it n
| months ago when the bad capacitors dies or they gave up
| frustrated by a recurring but intermitent issue.
| aendruk wrote:
| The most frustrating part is that I want _no_ logo. It's the
| worst of both worlds; no brand reputation, yet still covered in
| ads.
| reaperducer wrote:
| While not the ideal solution to your needs, I've found that
| Brasso does a great job of removing logos from electronics
| with a little elbow grease.
|
| I've used it on my LG television, my Levoit air cleaning
| machines, and other devices.
| avar wrote:
| Or acetone a.k.a. the pure form of nail polish remover.
| naoru wrote:
| Yeah no, that'll dissolve those ABS cases in no time.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| My friends laugh when i buy *anything, as the first thing i
| do is black-marker (i generally only buy black stuff) over
| any logos. For me, those little flashes of logo are just
| distracting.
| Gigachad wrote:
| The Apple dongles have no branding on them. Other than their
| distinctive design language I guess.
| c_o_n_v_e_x wrote:
| Just curious.... why?
| ramphastidae wrote:
| Why should I pay a company to advertise for them?
| openknot wrote:
| I'm not the same user, though I also prefer no/minimal
| logos on devices or clothing.
|
| The practical advantage of no logos is that this avoids
| judgement. People may look down on you for spending so much
| to get an item from a brand, while other people might look
| down on you for spending too little. You could just not
| care about others' judgement, though other people could
| still treat you differently. Separately, there is the
| ethical issue of whether one frames visible logos as 'free
| advertising,' which might not be desirable to do.
|
| The sociology text "Class: A Guide Through the American
| Status System" by Paul Fussell also explores why some
| people deliberately wear brands, while others avoid them.
|
| On a (potential over-analysis) of why some people
| deliberately have branded items: ""Legible clothing" is
| Alison Lurie's useful term to designate things like
| T-shirts or caps with messages on them you're supposed to
| read and admire. [...] When proles assemble to enjoy
| leisure, they seldom appear in clothing without words on
| it. As you move up the classes and the understatement
| principle begins to operate, the words gradually disappear,
| to be replaced, in the middle and upper- middle classes, by
| mere emblems, like the Lacoste alligator. Once, ascending
| further, you've left all such trademarks behind, you may
| correctly infer that you are entering the purlieus of the
| upper class itself."
|
| "Brand names today possess a totemistic power to confer
| distinction on those who wear them. By donning legible
| clothing you fuse your private identity with external com-
| mercial success, redeeming your insignificance and
| becoming, for the moment, somebody. [...] And this need is
| not the proles' alone. Witness the T-shirts and carryalls
| stamped with the logo of The New York Review of Books,
| which convey the point "I read hard books," or printed with
| portraits of Mozart and Haydn and Beethoven, which assure
| the world, "I am civilized."
|
| On why some people deliberately avoid logos: "X people are
| independent-minded, free of anxious regard for popular
| shibboleths, loose in carriage and demeanor. [...] Since
| there's no one they think worth impressing by mere
| appearance, X people tend to dress for themselves alone,
| which means they dress comfortably, and generally "down."
| [...] If the Xs ever descend to legible clothing, the
| words-unlike BUDWEISER or U.S.A. DRINKING TEAM-are original
| and interesting, although no comment on them is ever
| expected. Indeed, visibly to notice them would be bad
| form."
|
| The TL;DR of the whole hypothesis by Fussell is that some
| people avoid having brands on their physical stuff because
| they don't want others to see a logo on an item; connect
| the logo to values of a corporation as part of that
| corporation's "brand identity"; and make assumptions about
| that person's personal identity based on that brand
| identity.
| aendruk wrote:
| I live in a world overrun by capitalism and inundated with
| ads. The inescapable consumerism is sickening. That it's
| the norm to run ads on practically every consumer product
| is absurd, and I feel gaslit that apparently everyone else
| is comfortable with it. We pay to remove ads from many
| services--why does my thousand-dollar bicycle still have a
| permanent billboard on the side? Have I not paid enough?
| Removing a logo from my life is one small reprieve from the
| dystopia.
| openknot wrote:
| I also try to cover up logos when I can, but that's the
| thing: to many, it's not seen as an ad, but rather a form
| of expression. Having an expensive brand might signal to
| other cyclists that one is supposedly more experienced,
| or more serious of a cyclist than people with cheaper
| bicycles (in reality, the skill is what counts, but the
| brand focus is what the companies want you to believe).
| So, it's supposedly a feature.
|
| More examples in the winter fashion industry: supposedly,
| to wear a Patagonia jacket says you care about
| sustainability; to wear a Canada Goose jacket says you
| have a quality coat and can afford it; while to wear
| Arc'teryx means you're a pro outdoorsy bloke prepared for
| extreme weather. A lot of the price comes from people
| wanting to communicate stuff about their identity.
|
| (Slightly off-topic, but the cheapest and most functional
| way to stay warm isn't a parka, but wearing multiple
| layers, e.g. a base layer, a puffer jacket, and a
| waterproof windbreaker.)
| G3rn0ti wrote:
| > The inescapable consumerism is sickening.
|
| Well, where do you buy USB hubs in a world w/o capitalism
| and consumerism?
| philwelch wrote:
| Communist China, just like we do in this world.
| qwezxcrty wrote:
| But the real China is full of capitalism and consumerism.
| Unfortunately, there is no place for communist in this
| world.
| [deleted]
| dogecoinbase wrote:
| > Removing a logo from my life is one small reprieve from
| the dystopia.
|
| And a great way to advertise to your peer group that
| you're comfortable and wealthy enough to be able to
| choose to disengage from the capitalist rat race!
| GSimon wrote:
| Amazon Basics logo (or other generic company) looks a bit
| tacky
| blowski wrote:
| A lot of the time, sure, this is exactly what happens. But
| other times, there is a distinct difference in quality. How do
| you know when you're in situation A or B? You can't trust the
| reviews. You can't even trust that the seller will send you the
| advertised product half the time.
| wnevets wrote:
| Amazon is just the dollar store on the internet where every
| product has 4+ stars.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Just to expand on this: I suspect and have been told that
| almost all powertools follow this model. The markup for most
| tools in the same class is essentially branding only.
| manyxcxi wrote:
| It's _mostly_ kinda sorta like that. There are broad groups
| that are basically the same; Craftsman and Dewalt being owned
| by Black and Decker, for instance. But it's a crazy web
| depending on particular tools or features it goes from a
| couple root manufacturers to a dozen or so. But there's a lot
| of BS.
|
| Pro Tool Reviews did a big break down [0] a while ago that
| was very eye opening for me. It could easily be out of date
| by now but I had no clue how deep the groupings went at the
| time.
|
| [0] https://www.protoolreviews.com/power-tool-manufacturers-
| who-...
| bombcar wrote:
| This is mainly because power-tool quality across the board
| has greatly increased - once you're into a "band" they're
| much the same, though there are differences it's usually one
| of "focus" not of quality.
|
| If you're dealing with off-brand or no-brand tools, you can
| still end up with something entirely usable but crappy. The
| prices usually tell most of the story.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| "Project Farm" on YouTube does really great tool reviews
| with zero BS. There are differences between major tool
| brands and it's not just a matter of same factory,
| different brand sticker like with a lot of electronics.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpjBJ8aQ3NE is a good
| example. It's pretty hard to go wrong with any of the major
| players these days, more about what color you like or their
| tool ecosystem. I'm into Milwaukee and like a whole lot of
| their tools, so I ended up getting about a dozen of them
| over the years. Milwaukee tends to be on or near the top in
| terms of performance, and while that might not be necessary
| for occasional non-professional use, I have done a few
| things with them where I was glad to have the extra power
| or just have a well-designed tool that is easy to use.
| Festool is even more premium but when I started buying
| Milwaukee they didn't have any or maybe only very few
| cordless tools, and they were too expensive for me at the
| time. Home Depot does pretty awesome holiday sales on
| Milwaukee if you keep an eye out, and eBay also has great
| deals on "tool only" once you have some batteries in your
| ecosystem of choice, as people do things like buy combo
| packs and sell the individual tools they don't want.
| Milwaukee also has excellent batteries that while pricey,
| are again relatively easy to find deals on if you keep an
| eye out.
|
| Hand tools are sometimes more about feel than actual
| performance differences, but over the years I've come to
| appreciate (and be able to easily afford) the nicer stuff.
| It's nice not stripping Phillips head screws now that I've
| got really nice drivers with excellent sharp grippy tips in
| all the different sizes to properly fit. I grew up with the
| poorly-made fake chrome set of "jewelers" screw drivers
| that I'm sure many of y'all also learned on. I guess it
| makes me appreciate Wiha / PB Swiss / Wera / Felo / Klein
| MIUSA / custom boutique stuff (check out Scout Leather Co
| and CountyComm TPSK for some of the best precision multi-
| bit drivers I've used) more now.
|
| On hand tools, Project Farm reviews those too, e.g.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HP4uECoH8cc for torque
| wrenches.
|
| I admit that there are some made-up Chinese brands that are
| just slapping a random name on stuff coming out of the same
| few factories and selling on Amazon (then changing the name
| if they get bad reviews) for tools, but that's only really
| at the bottom of the market. Mid and top-tier tools do
| actually have measurable performance differences in many
| cases. Whether that's worth it to you is for y'all to
| decide. I just really hate ruining a project / breaking
| stuff because of bad tools that can't do the job, and I
| dislike supporting companies that make knock-off designs
| (i.e. they don't pay for their own R&D) out of cheaper,
| weaker metals then selling look-alikes at still-too-much-
| for-what-you're-getting prices. There's actually a name for
| this in the bicycle world: "bike shaped objects".
| thrwyoilarticle wrote:
| >It's nice not stripping Phillips head screws now that
| I've got really nice drivers with excellent sharp grippy
| tips in all the different sizes to properly fit.
|
| Life hack: use a better screw. Pozidriv is 60 years old!
| rdtwo wrote:
| Wera bits are so worth it
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| I wish that most screws and hand screwdriver heads (I
| have more electronics than mechanical experience) were
| designed to not slip/strip in the first place. Torx is
| great, Phillips is not, I hear that there are alternative
| cross-shaped screw heads which don't strip, and I don't
| know if they work on Phillips screws or not. Though I
| don't have expensive hardened screwdrivers, and most
| products' screws aren't expensive and hardened either.
| ineedasername wrote:
| > _costs, positive reviews, and shipping time_
|
| Yes, this. There are a few exceptions, thing like ssd drives,
| ram, sd cards, etc which I buy from companies that I know
| manufacture their own. For random peripherals, I just make sure
| it's Amazon Prime so there won't be any hassle if/when I need
| to return them.
|
| I make an exception for earphones. Unless you're buying off-
| brand, you can be pretty certain that you're not getting white
| labelled. I'm listening to an audio book on Shure TW2's w/
| se215 heads attached... not much chance that's white labelled.
| Same for the lower quality but also lower profile Galaxy Buds
| Live that I use as well.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| I have mostly stopped buying small electronics on Amazon, going
| to AliExpress instead. You get the same thing for much cheaper.
| The value Amazon has is in shipping time, but you pay a hefty
| premium for that.
|
| It is important to note that the cheapest, unbranded (or
| counterfeit) products may actually miss components. Looking at
| the PCB, you may see an empty slot where a MOV or a filtering
| cap should be, underspecced components or blatant counterfeits
| (no, that cap is not a Nichicon!). They may be from the same
| factories, but brand names usually don't get that low, and they
| have people on site making sure the factories don't pull these
| stunts on their batch.
| 2075 wrote:
| The first one reliably working on a mac book pro with a display
| res > 4k usb-c and TB4 was, after trying many, the RAZER Mercury:
| https://www.razer.com/gaming/pc/accessories/razer-thunderbol....
| Not cheap but saves so much time because it simply works.
| djrogers wrote:
| This may sound a bit pedantic here, but this statement:
|
| " I'm writing this on an Apple MacBook Pro, and all I got was
| four lousy USB-C ports"
|
| Is wildly inaccurate, as the author demonstrates in his
| conclusions where he explains that he's settled on a Thunderbolt
| hub.
|
| Yes, they're more expensive, and yes, they're harder to find, but
| the fact is, for this type of use USB-C is kinda junky, and
| Thunderbolt is a much better option.
| dijit wrote:
| This is not the conclusion.
|
| the Dell TB16 is just about the worst docking station I've ever
| used and that was Thunderbolt 3, and their USB-C equivalent
| (WD16 iirc) worked flawlessly.
|
| Likely if you tore down the TB16 you would find the chip
| mentioned in TFA.
| olyjohn wrote:
| I've dealt with a number of these docks. And yeah, it's a
| Realtek NIC on them, and it's a total piece of crap. Endless
| issues with these docks, firmware updates, new drivers
| constantly... None of it ever helps.
|
| I tried using it on my Mac. But it's on some kind of an Apple
| blacklist and won't work on Macs. There was some way to
| enable it, by turning off system protection or some shit...
| But even then, you could not get all the functionality.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| I have never gotten the TB16 to work on anything other than
| Dells of around the same era. I don't think it's Apple
| blacklisting it, but rather the dock whitelisting things.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| Yes, the TB16 does use a RTL8153, but so does the WD16. This
| is the USB part which is common to both.
| ApolIllo wrote:
| I agree - Thunderbolt is the way to go. It's typically 2 - 3x
| the price of a USB-C dock, but it's well worth it for me.
|
| I have the TBT3-UDV and caldigit TS4 TBolt dock. They both rely
| on DC power supplies and higher quality components (intel NIC,
| for example). Both have been very stable over the last year for
| the TS4 and 3 yrs for the TBT3.
| bombcar wrote:
| Thunderbolt _is_ the way to go - my AKiTiO Thunder3 Dock Pro
| has been doing fine driving monitors and 10GB /s ethernet.
| antonvs wrote:
| The same basic conclusion can be reached just by browsing Amazon
| and looking at specs and case design similarities.
| ben7799 wrote:
| 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.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _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._
|
| Having used actually-junky docks, a good one is worth the
| money. My TS3+ is in year 3 of consistent, rock-solid
| performance. Most of its ports are used all the time, the host
| computer never sleeps (I've used it with both Intel and Apple
| Silicon Macs), and I've never had an issue that I couldn't
| attribute to a bad cable.
| ben7799 wrote:
| Apparently you just missed me saying my CalDigit TS3+ failed
| last week and IT had a whole bin full of others that failed.
|
| It's not the cables.. they handed me a new TS3+ and it
| immediately worked perfectly and it will probably continue to
| work for a year or two before starting the process of flaking
| out.
|
| To be honest with the # of them I've seen break (almost
| everyone I know at work) the posts here seem like astro-
| turfing.
|
| You might have a good one, but if you had 500 of them in an
| office you wouldn't think the product is "good" on average.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Apparently you just missed me saying my CalDigit TS3+
| failed last week and IT had a whole bin full of others that
| failed._
|
| Nope, that's why I posted a counter-anecdote. Not one has
| failed in my circle of friends, I think they're ugly but
| the build quality seems pretty great, so I'm just surprised
| to hear about your IT department's bin of dead TS3+ that
| they keep around for some reason. (I can't speak for the
| OWC dock personally.)
| ben7799 wrote:
| Basically so many have failed they've got a bin of them
| waiting for a chance for electronics recycling.
|
| Sure a corporate anecdote is an anecdote but it's a
| sample size of ~500 versus 1 or 2-3.
|
| The OWC ones do seem to be worse, that's why we
| transitioned to the TS3+.
| Kalanos wrote:
| Even with a 2014 macbook I still have to run an oldschool USB hub
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I never saw a multifunctional USB 3 hub (that has anything more
| than USB 3 sockets) where all the features worked on Windows.
|
| One could blame: Windows, crap hardware from Dell, and crap hub
| hardware. I think it is all three.
| vel0city wrote:
| I'm currently using a Lenovo Hybrid USB-C dock in Windows. Dual
| displays, ethernet, USB-3, USB-C, USB 2.0, audio, all working
| fine and have been for >2 years. Its worked with several
| different models of laptops without having to manually install
| any additional drivers and software.
|
| As a note though, its a DisplayLink dock. There's definitely
| performance implications on using a DisplayLink device versus
| USB-C alternate mode, but on the other hand its never had
| problems with the several Windows devices I've used it with.
|
| https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/accessories-and-software/dock...
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