Matt has done an outstanding job (and a public service) in his explanation of why the current market for I/O protocols, cables, storage devices and hubs is nothing short of mind numbing. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. BTW, I found it necessary to view this video twice in order to achieve some kind of clarity. Hear hear, Matt. Thank you. Well done.
Lol just buy the one he says is the best or the one that performs the best for what u want to use it for. I'm buying the charjenpro because I'm looking for high transfer rate using sd cards. It's also the best portable dock he tested.
Thanks Matt. First video I've watched from your channel and couldn't have been more straightforward. No BS, just straightforward testing and result with price in mind. Subscribed!
One thing that I've REALLY appreciated about the new mac studio display that everyone laughed at is that it has TB4 and basically serves as my charger and dongle. Plus the speakers and screen are great.
Matt, you've made decision making all the more complex, yet all the more considered when needing external connectivity for Macs with limited ports? Video still stands up, subcribed!
Thanks Matt. That was immensely helpful in sifting the chart from the wheat. I ended up going with the Thunderbolt 5n1 as it was cheaper to bring it into NZ than the Charjen. Not sure if the 5n1 was available when you did the review or not but the difference was 1x USB-A, both were the same price.
perfect timing for this review Matt, thanks, I have just gone out and bought a Mac Studio and have ordered the Charjen Pro to sit alongside it. I was also happy to hear your results when using the Scandisk Extreme Pro 4TB SSD as your test drive, coz i had already ordered 1 of those 🙂 cheers man, and keep up the great work
OMG.... This is brilliant and helped me weed through all the options and just purchased the Plugable Thunderbolt 4 5-in-1 Hub from BHPhoto in time for a remote shoot and edit next week! Instant ❤ and Subscribe!!
Excellent work ! The USB-C 3/4 Thunderbolt 3/4 wording and claims in many of the docks' marketing material is very ambiguous and confusing. You gave the essential information from a user perspective, thank you.
Hi Matt, I would like to share with you my experiences from the Dell dock which I have the "pleasure" of using in my workplace for many months now. It is incompatible with a lot of devices, for example the power button does not work with any of our Fujitsu or Lenovo Laptops. When powered on, the LED is not lit, so why bother putting and status LED there in the first place? A lot of times it just shuts down the monitors and the only chance to get them back to work is to restart the laptop. And finally it has a very annoying sounding fan, that does rather often "sing the song of its people". All in all, I absolutely hate this piece of tech as it troubles me quite a lot in my daily workflow. But I agree with the build quality and the nice cable.
I don't get author's point. Non permanent cable is actually one of the most critical features of well designed device. In case of braked plug you just replace the cable in seconds and you are good to go. Otherwise you need to replace whole device for couple of hundred dollars. This is just silly design.
Even though you threw it in the trash I very happy with my Caldigit Element. Especially since I pre order it and got it for $140. I was tired of buying cheap $20 or $30 USB hubs. I bought a few before the Element and they all stopped working within weeks. They would continuously connect and disconnect from windows.
You are right the Thinkpad unit is for corporate work in my last job we had an earlier version of that unit handed to us along with a laptop to replace our desktop and tablet combinations we had been using. We got the option of keeping the desktop screen and keyboard for when we were at our desk and had it all attached to the hub for when we were at our desks.
OWC Thunderbolt 3 Pro dock is my best choice, cause of 10GBE. i bought echo 5 thunderbolt 4 hub cause of the 85W power delivery. and Sonnettech is a great company to deal with.
If you have TB3 or TB4 on your computer, don't get a dock that uses DisplayLink. USB docks tend to use DisplayLink. But TB3/4 supports video passthrough directly, so get a TB3/4 dock. I used to use a DellD6000 dock which was OK but I had Displaylink issues with my home PC. I recently changed to a Dell TB4 dock, and I love it. When using PC, I drive the screens from the GPU, but when I use my laptop or work laptop, the GPU in those passes through the video signal on the TB cable.
Hello Matt, thank you for the thorough review. Unfortunately, the links you have provided don't work so well outside the US, for two of the three winners I get a generic Amazon search page here in Germany. I would therefore very much appreciate if you could provide the exact model names so I can plug them into a shopping search engine here. Thank you
Wow Matt, nobody could possibly accuse you of a superficial review! Tremendously helpful, although I may need some time to digest which of this array of kit might suit me best. Cheers mate.
Hey Matt. Thanks. I'm really looking forward, Looks like Thunderbolt 4? I need lots of usb c outs. I'll check out your other vids, but, if you stumble on me, let me know if you have ideas. Truly appreciate it
So I bought this one VIEKK brand off Amazon. And it works for my brand new m2 pro 16gb 1tb. I’m able to do 2hdmi and 1 vga, and then also use 1 usb c port . So 4 external total. Problem is , it makes my laptop run realllt slow , and my Apps will end up saying “not responding, but will be just fine once I unplug the dock. But when I use that same dock wi th my 2012 MacBook Pro , it’s runn with no issues
21:35 Why would you consider a built in TB cable to be a positive? I've had two Dell docks with built in TB cables and both developed connectivity issues in the long term. I would rather have the cable separate so that I can replace it when necessary instead of having to replace the entire dock if/when the cable fails
Excellent review, and I like your approach. Detailed and thorough. I just bought a shiny M1 MacBook Pro (to replace my 7 year old Mac Mini) and needed a dock. Turns out I have two Thinkpad docks lying around and they work okay, but if I had to buy a new one I'd look at one of these. Subbed. PS: I also bought one of those 4T Sandisk drives. Nice.
You never mentioned that with hubs, all of the devices connected are powered directly by your computer which can drastically lower battery life whereas with a dock they typically have their own power supply and they power the ports with that supply, so it wouldn't draw much (if any at all) power from your computer for the connected devices. Charging your laptop aside. One downside to a dock is that is constantly charges your laptop and you can't turn off this charging if you need to use your devices. This is a MAJOR pitfall because it will keep your battery always charging when plugged in and cause overvolting/overcharging which will lower your battery's lifespan significantly. This is why I typically prefer hubs to docks, because I can use my devices and disconnect my charger from the laptop for a bit so as to let it discharge and not cause battery damage by having it constantly charging all the time.
@mattgranger correct. But leaving the battery in a constant state of overcharging over 100% is not good for the lifespan of the battery. It causes overvolting which actually damages the battery when done for long periods and shortens their lifespan. It can lead to battery swelling. I work in IT and I've seen users who rely on docks being constantly plugged in have all sorts of battery issues. It's something I think the makers of docks don't want you to know. It's a very good practice to discharge your battery entirely and then charge it up again, every so often, but not to just leave it plugged in all the time, 24/7.
I'm looking at the larger docks with HDMI out. The odd thing is that the Lenovo is the cheapest option here. By a noticeable margin. I'll sleep on it, but I think I might go with the Lenovo. My M1Pro macbook pro has a SD reader built in, and the rest of the performance looks to be good enough.
The Anker one where it says not compatible with M1 MacBook, most likely refer to the fact that it cannot output to more than 1 external display (this is referring to M1 and M2 MacBook Air also M1 MacBook Pro 13" and M2 MacBook Pro 13"). But thank you for doing this test.
The fact is you can find that thinkpad ones for around 40€, in Europe at least, thanks to companies who likes to produce useful ewaste on a daily basis
Great test thanks ! not sure if it is outside of the scope but since you do so much detail anyway, for 2023 it would be nice to get some feedback on the ethernet part of products that are able. like link speed specs and if the actual performance differs between the models.
You're missing the OWC Thunderbolt Dock on the high end. For the benchmark, I'm surprised you're not using a M.2 NVMe SSD Thunderbolt Enclosure with a high end drive like the SAMSUNG 980 PRO SSD the for the fastest Read and Write speed vs. the SanDisk with only good read speeds but much lower write speed. You didn't give the hubs an opportunity to exceed the speed of the SSD you standardized on.
I have absolutely no need for any sort of display connection or ethernet. I just need something like 5 USB-A and 2 USB-C, all at least USB 3.0. It would be a big bonus with an SD card reader too. No need for transportability what so ever. Any suggestions?
Thanks for this review. It’s very helpful for my purchasing decision for my M1 iPad Pro. Question: do you know how the Plugable “small” compares to OWC Thunderbolt 4 Hub that is the same size, same ports, with one additional USB A 3.1 port. The prices for both are the same right now $149. I like the OWC because of the additional USB A port, but I wonder how do their speeds and temperature compare.
Hi Matt - excellent review, thanks. One consideration you didn't discuss is the amount of power delivery of the various hubs. Your MBP 16" comes with a 140W USB-C adapter. None of the hubs supply that so if you're using passthrough power via the hub, the connected laptops may not recharge as fast as a direct connection.
USB-C cable is defined to 100w power delivery. More ist no possible this times. That's why Lenovo for example has a splitter cable für USB-C/Thunderbolt and power. Its not mentioned in the video, as a lot of other important things.
So if I understood correctly if I only have a USB-C 3.2 gen 1 port in both my computer and monitors USB hub I can still use a Thunderbolt 3 or 4 cable but ofc only get the speed of 3.2 gen 1?
Hi Matt, Appreciate the effort on the testing. I am in Australia and none of your Amazon links show the products you have tested just generic Amazon stores. Would you please be able to tell me the model number of the Dell dock? Thanks Josh
@Matt Granger Hello, i have a motherboard on my pc wich has 2 port usbc thunderbolt 4 (gigabyte z590i vision D), i never used and i know nothing about thunderbolt but for me the only utility from this port is to remove all usb from the back of pc (mouse/keyboard/headset/mic) and 3.5 jack audio to 1 cable only. (i dont use video through that output). now the only problem for me is that i saw hubs/docs with conection usb-c to usb-c host wich have many ports that i need and is a couple of bucks and the same docs with the same connection usb-c to usb-c to the host but with mention of (Thunderbolt 3/4) but is couple of hundred $ ... for what i need wich one is good for me , i really need a hub with Thunderbolt mention if already have Thunderbolt on my motherboard? Thanks. (i have the oportunity to buy this one Lenovo ThinkPad USB-C Dock (40A9) for a good price but i dont know if it`s good for what i need)
Thanks for the testing! Question: The Charjen doesn’t have a USB C port for data… Is there a similar one that can take USB C data (aka a drive?) Thanks!
Thank you very much for that extensive test. Is there such a product in the market with a CFExpress Card Reader? I don't need a micro SD Card reader anymore. What do you do as a Z9 shooter? I assume you also don't have any use in a SD Card- or at least a Micro SD Card reader anymore. Doesn't it bother you?
Thanks for the video, Matt! Can you confirm that the Charjen Pro can do data transfer through the USB-C Power Delivery port? I saw a comment from the manufacturer on the Amz product page that stated it is Power Delivery only, not data. Your video mentioned you were able to use the SanDisk external drive through the USB-C port on the Charjen Pro. Not having this ability would prevent me from purchasing this unit. Can you please clarify? Thanks.
Hey, I have this product, and I can confirm, it is powerdelivery ONLY. The usb c port does not provide data transfer... Very unfortunate as I thought the reviewer used it through the usb-c port...
Excellent video! Do all Thunderbolt 4 hubs can charge any laptop? Or is this not a standard to become Thunderbolt 4. The main reason I’m considering a hub is to be able to charge my laptop without using my charger… will these options work? I currently have an Asus Studiobook with a 240W charger. Thanks
One think you didn’t consider in this whole thing is the actual media in your laptop. I assume you have fast NVMe drives in it and other desktop and laptops may have slower versions or still running from HDD
Sure. But I don’t think anyone is watching this expecting the exact same results. It’s about the relative speed of the hubs, keeping the other things constant.
One of the best test I have seen so fare, but still you are missing very important information. Also you have to go further on with testing. The biggest thing is, that this test is far away from reality, because no one buys an expensive complete TB4 Hub (btw this are docks, not hubs) for connecting a drive or SD Card. I think, a full setup test is needed and I know that this will change everything. For example: the Dell Docking Station has a fan, which is claimed to make noise. Dell, Lenovo (I think also Anker) have several ports for Displays, but support only one Display with a Mac, because all ports a mirrored. For the second display you will lose the Thunderbolt Port. There's no audio in/out on the Dell, Lenovo doesn't support HDR with dual monitors, etc. etc.
@@mattgranger Oh, I didn't know till now that photographers are so special, don't care about noise fans, also they don't use external displays or HDR. So in conclusion you say they use expensive 40 Gb/s TB4 docks to extend slow 10 Gb/s USB and even slower SD Card slots, which are already built in the Laptop? Sounds a little bit strange to me.
Hello, Great reviews! I was hoping to get your opinion on docking stations with internal SATA 3.+ SSD Enclosures? Having a hard time finding the perfect one for me.
i have the dell wd19tb for my laptop at work. its works great. my portable option is gonna be the sandisk ssd you showed. i am still ambiguous as to which dongle i will use as it would only be for travel (vacation) and i dont need high speed transfer of files from an sd card
@@mattgranger Well, yeah. TB4 ports provide a wide array of connection options and are the most future proof, but an HDMI has one purpose. TB4 already has ridiculous speed so any 5-10% degradation through the dock is irrelevant, compared with the types of connections. I felt the Kensington you tossed in the garbage was the most relevant for the idea of a TB4 dock.
6 - not that I know of. The smaller TB4 options i cover here are the closest. Note that TB can be daisy chained, so you can connect more than 6 devices with 4 ports.
I ordered the Chargen Pro tested in this review and tried it with my M1 iPadPro and my 2020 MacBook Pro. I used a Samsung T7 1TB and a LaCie Thunderbolt 4TB drive over USB-C connection - both would not mount if I plug them into the hub, neither on the MacBook Pro nor on the I Pad. They do though when I plug them in directly - What am I missing? This unit is not working for me …
I watched the review and bought a Chargen Pro to use on an HP laptop (Windows 11, i7). The device would not transmit video through the HDMI port. Contact Chargen who had me try a couple of tweeks to no effect. Given my PC was brand new, they felt the problem was in their device and sent a new one. The same problem occurred. I have not contacted them. Perhaps you have a solution?
idk if anyone will read this and help me out but my computer doesn't have thunderbolt connection, will these hubs work when I plug it into a usb c 3.2?
brooo im just looking for a small device for my surface pro but u just keep throwing all small ones in the trash i cant take a 400gram+ brick to school everyday just to access usb a sticks or sometimes work with lan at home :(((
This review is awful. Its not about the best thunderbolt docking station overall but about the best dongle for file transfer speed. What about the ability that all you have to put inside your mac is 1 thunderbolt and it charges it as well? What about monitor support ? 4K monitor, 144hz monitor? What about audio support? Unbalanced jack to plug studio monitors right into it ? So much more missing from this review which attributes should define the "BEST" Very misleading and disappointing
Used to have Lenovo and Dell. Dell is rubbish. It works badly with dell computers (surprise) and absolutely useless brick with Mac. Thing that I hate the most - stupid built-in short cable to connect with a pc. Zero flexibility when u use more then one laptops and want to store them both but from different sides of your table… Lenovo is suitable but a little bit pricy and outdated - I need more usb c. Anker looks agly and cheap in my hamble opinion.
@@mattgranger might be that my was broken 🤷♂️ but neither pro m1 nor air m2 didn’t work. No charging, no monitors. At the same time dell laptop used to work somehow (mostly partly).
Test results: learn.mattgranger.com/courses/tb4 Best Dongle: geni.us/aIc6nb Best small TB4 Hub: geni.us/OmMBxCD Best Complete TB4 Hub: geni.us/hCUvWo9 Runner Up (Anker): geni.us/sh55
