majkeli

narc0tic_bird, 10 months ago

USB-C and Thunderbolt docks/hubs are a huge mess.

Around a year ago I was searching for a solid single-cable solution for my M1 Max MacBook Pro to hook up to an external monitor, ethernet and peripherals - and best case a decent audio jack.

The MacBook supports Thunderbolt 4 so I thought I might as well go for a Thunderbolt 4 dock (as opposed to a “normal” USB-C dock), but oh boy.

First, there was the problem of display outputs. I thought I’d just get a dock with two DisplayPort ports. But there are a lot of differences. Some are DisplayPort 1.4, some only 1.2. And some use MST (multi stream transport) to support both ports; which macOS does not support. Thunderbolt 4 does support two distinct streams of DisplayPort though, so in theory docks could exist with two DisplayPort ports, each with their own dedicated stream/signal.

Long story short, there were basically no docks with these specifications. So it became clear to me early in the selection process that would need to act as a hub that has multiple Thunderbolt outputs, so I can simply use USB-C to DisplayPort cables. This seems to be the best solution anyways, as the dock doesn’t limit you in DisplayPort version or feature set this way.

So I looked for a Dock with 2-3 Thunderbolt outputs, Power Delivery, USB-A, gigabit ethernet and an audio jack.

There’s the Razer Thunderbolt 4 dock for example. Has all required ports, provides 90 watts of power to the computer and (at least in color “Mercury”), looks the part. Bought it, plugged it in, connected a display via USB-C to DisplayPort cable. So far, so good. USB-A seems to be working.

So, what are the problems? Well. Firstly, the ethernet controller is connected to the internal USB controller. This also means it shares bandwidth and when hammering the USB controller, doesn’t only mean bandwidth is throttled, but also that latency can be affected and spike seemingly randomly (like you’re on wifi). There are also reportedly some issues with USB ethernet when waking up from sleep, but this might be related to macOS. Anyways, use f* PCIe based ethernet in your 300,-€ dock!

Next problem was something I couldn’t believe got through QA. When audio starts playing via the audio jack, the right channel starts playing immediately, but the left channel starts after I’d say around a 200-300ms delay. This is VERY irritating, especially with headphones. As I said I couldn’t believe it so I tried other devices including Windows 10 and 11 notebooks, and they all showed the exact same issue with this dock.

I found out that the problem goes away or is at least reduced when you set audio output to 24-bit in Windows. That’s not how it works in macOS though (I know you can set something in some MIDI audio setting app, but that didn’t help). So you’re basically stuck. It’s so insane to me that this glaring and obvious issue went through QA.

Then I thought okay, it’s just Razer being Razer and ordered alternative docks. Turns out THEY ARE ALL THE SAME CRAP INSIDE. Sonnet Echo 11, i-tec whatever, Kensington. If it has a similar port layout to the Razer dock, it’s likely that it’s the exact same crap with the only difference being the odd USB-A port more or less and slightly different PD wattage.

There’s a highly praised 400,-€ dock from CalDigit, but availability was bad at the time.

I ended up getting an Anker dock for around 170,-€, which simply has 3 Thunderbolt 4 outputs and a single USB-A output. I connected a simple USB-A hub so I can connect keyboard, mouse and USB DAC and mic for audio. I use the Thunderbolt outputs for DisplayPort via USB-C and the Apple Thunderbolt (1) Gigabit Ethernet adapter plugged into an Apple Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3 adapter, and that’s plugged into the dock. You wouldn’t believe that this abomination of adapter chaos works a million times better than this USB ethernet crap.

Now, this setup works but it’s super ugly and messy on the desk.

Nowadays I’m using some HP monitor with USB-C which has built-in ethernet and USB-A ports. It’s honestly not a great solution (and functionally worse than my solution above), but it’s simple and doesn’t clutter your desk with 3-4 different boxes and 10 cables.

Unbelievable.

Spacebar, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

How is Dorsey’s opinion supposed to matter to me?

Business leaders have nothing in common with the rest of us, so why should we trust them to have our best interests in mind? Athletes, famous musicians, business leaders, celebrities all have one thing in common - money. They have much more of it than the vast majority of people and they generally want more of it.

Jack Dorsey doesn’t want Democrats in power because they might “take his money”, so he’s promoting a fringe candidate to be a spoiler to Biden.

Jaysyn, 10 months ago

This was by the criminal Trump administration's design.

AttackBunny, 10 months ago

All this, while actual small businesses couldn't even get funding, during the first round, because the banks had already given all their allocated money to their friends and "whale" customers, BEFORE the application went live online.

I went through this during first round. Then once FinTech finally opened up, some people had better luck, BUT there were some of us that couldn't get the first round at all because they hadn't accounted for certain business structures in regards to paperwork.

I was a giant shitshow setup by trump to give money to the people that didn't need it.

PabloDiscobar, 10 months ago

Remember kids: ALL COPS ARE BASTARDS. No exceptions, nowhere in the world.

This is the mantra of lemmy.ml.

Tell us, how are russian and chinese cops?

magnetosphere, 10 months ago

Those “antiwoke” people disgust me. I encourage disagreements. I don’t encourage thinly veiled hate disguised with code words. Tolerance isn’t “far left”.

TommySalami, 10 months ago

Right, cause you can trust Todd and Bethesda. Honestly, their steady decline has turned me from a Bethesda fan into a real cynic. The cheap, fall apart merch from Fallout 4 and 76, paid mods, the utter mess and voracious monetization of 76, the treadmill of Skyrim releases, forcing their own broken launcher onto people and then decommissioning it, and that is saying nothing of the bugs and jank people have just come to expect. I was glued to my computer when Fallout 4 was announced, but Starfield was barely a blip for me, and the little I have seen is thoroughly unimpressive. Regardless of how it does, though, I'm sure plenty of folks will be lining up in 2032 for ES6: Skyrim 2 or whatever they come up with.

Jiberish, 10 months ago

Another case of enshittification.