The good folk at WAVLINK have sent me their Dual-Screen USB-C adapter to review. Plug it in to a USB-C socket and you now have two extra monitor ports. It'll even work on a USB-A socket, if it is USB 3.0.
The USB cable has a dongle which converts it from C to A. That's handy if you don't have enough C ports. But the cable being so short means it is sort of awkward to place. If you're on a narrow desk, the weighty adapter will just be left swinging.
On the back are four ports - two DisplayPorts and two HDMI.
But you can only use two at a time. I stuck a DP in the left and an HDMI in the right and (eventually) it worked! I was able to get 4k @ 60Hz and 1080p @ 60Hz on my screens.
It also passed through audio, although I couldn't find a way to select which monitor received the output.
There's also the requisite blue LED to let you know it is working.
Sadly, it is a bit of a faff to get set up because it is a DisplayLink adapter, rather than a USB-C hub. The manual spends 11 pages talking about driver installation!
Plugging it in to Linux shows 17e9:6000 DisplayLink USB3.0 5K Graphic Adapter - so it was detected without issue. That said, there were some warnings in dmesg:
Warning! Unlikely big volume range (=672), cval->res is probably wrong.[7] FU [USB Audio Playback Volume] ch = 6, val = -10752/0/16
But plugging it in doesn't give you extra screens. Instead, you need to visit DisplayLink.com to download the drivers. They are only available for Ubuntu Linux. There are also drivers for Windows, ChromeOS, Mac, and Android.
Despite my best efforts, I couldn't get them to work. It looks pretty buggy. Instead, I downloaded a random GitHub repo which installed the right drivers and got it working.
Once that was done, my laptop happily detected both external screens - one HDMI, one DisplayPort. It was able to change resolution, rotation, and refresh rate using Wayland. It even worked through the USB-A socket as well as the C.
It's hard to know who this adapter is for. On the one hand, it does its job brilliantly. It turns your USB3 / USB-C port into a dual output device for two 4k monitors. On the other hand, that's all it does.
Installing the DisplayLink software is a pain. USB-C means that I should be able to plug in an adapter and have it just work. With this, you have to manually install drivers and reboot before it will work. Good luck getting those drivers installed on a corporate laptop!
In theory, it can go up to 5K (5120x1440) on each DisplayPort - but I don't had a screen to test it on. If you need that sort of resolution, that's the only reason I can think for buying this.
It works - but it isn't plug-and-play, the drivers are a pain, USB cable is too short, it has limited functionality, it is too bulky, and is over-priced.
