OK, a quick report on my life with dongles and other attachments for MacBooks. Suffice to say these dongles definitely have a spotty record for me. Most of the time they seem to work fine if you leave them plugged in, but it’s detection that seems like the problem (and the occasional burnout, see below). Net, net, I’d say stick with the more expensive hubs or don’t plug them in constantly as I do.
- Geddie USB C Hub with 4K60, two USB ports, and 87-watt power. Well sad to say this $20 part seemed too good to be true and today, I smelled burning electronics and it died. So I would be careful using this one.
- Satechi USB C Hub. This is an old one that I have and am using it now, it does seem to work, although it is $80 and only is 4K30 so there are artifacts when you move things on the screen
- CalDigit TS3 Plus an Acer Displayport and ASUS HDMI monitor. This seems to be sort of working well. The first few times, the Acer would not wake up but seems OK now. It is $220 so the way is more expensive and huge. It’s not portable but seems to work better than the cheap Hubs I’ve been using.
- CalDigit TS3 Plus with an ASUS HDMI monitor. I’ve had way more trouble with this one. Sometimes when you plug it in, some of the USB ports are not detected. The biggest problem seems to be the USB C 5Gbps ports were with an Apple USB C to USB A adapter, the peripheral doesn’t seem to be detected. Not sure what the problem. Also, the HDMI to Displayport adapter didn’t seem to work and the monitor wasn’t detected. Sigh, switched to a Displayport input and this seems a little more reliable.
