A short story of me trying out different USB-C hubs, taking them apart, and slowly descending into madness.

I was looking for a new USB-c hub and came across this article. It’s an interesting write-up of what is on the inside of some popular options

    • outdated_belated@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      FWIW, I have no issue with the CalDigit TS3 Plus dock, although since I have an M1 that doesn’t allow dual external displays anyway, I can’t test that.

      Actually nvm, I do have issue. I gave up trying to connect the external monitor to that dock and instead connect it separately. I forgot why I do this, though, to be honest … I had some issue with it IIRC

      Edit: I just tried connecting the display through the dock again, and it works without issue; perhaps something changed since the last time I tried (OS version, for one; it might have also been my old work laptop that had the issue, and I simply just wanted to use the same setup for both)

      Edit 2: Ah, this is the issue, and it’s subtle! If I use the CalDigit dock to connect the (5K) display, it is, for some reason, very subtly but definitively blurry. However, connecting directly to its own Thunderbolt port on the laptop makes it clear.

    • narc0tic_bird@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Great that it works for you, but this dock has many of the same issues I’m describing in my post. Outputting to two displays uses MST, so it simply won’t work under macOS (except for cloning the image). Ethernet is internally connected via USB instead of PCIe.

      Note that all USB 3.1/3.2/(whatever, fuck USB naming) docks have these problems, but Thunderbolt 4 docks can - in theory - do better.