One interesting takeaway for me was that there are actually some quite cheap hubs available from AliExpress and the "branded" ones are essentially the same with a logo printed on (and hopefully some additional QA).
Very unlikely. For this sort of thing it’s always been safe to assume that Amazon or EBay are AliExpress with faster domestic shipping and better customer service - that is what the premium is buying you.
USB hubs are only one of many items that are sold rebadged or not on both Amazon and Ali.
Not sure, about the only items, my Lenovo soundbar is actually not a Lenovo one, it's printed on it, but they didn't assemble it, but a lot of producrs do this.
I can add this. A lot of specialized tools like watch tools, like high priced Bergeon/Horia, are found much cheaper on Alibaba with generic names.
Vector watch lathes are Sincere lathes but cleaned up machinist wize, and put in a fancy wood laser etched box. Basically you are paying 2-3x for packaging, and minor fine tuning.
I was once for tartifs.
I wish we could go back to products being made in certain European countries, and the USA, but that ship has sailed. (Meaning countries that paid a living wage, and offered social services to their poor. USA is sadily not even trying to help its poorest citizens.)
I still buy overpriced tooling/products on Amazon/ebay with jacked up prices because I just can't be sure on my intuition, and hate giving the Chinese my debt card. I should just buy prepaid cards, but they are another added expense, and very scammy.
(There are no laws stating Prepaid cards need to tell you how much you have left on their cards. In most cases you need to talk to a representative of the company. And yes--the amount of money consumers forget they have on their prepaid cards is staggering. (A simple fix would be a federal law stating that any money left on prepaid card is returned to buyer, or at least email them of their balance.)
If the Chinese government guaranteed they would go after any merchant that was fraudulent; I would buy most products from China.
Why? Because buying American does not seem to filter down to the employees, or in taxes. The CEO's just get richer?
I think i posted about it on that previous discussion, but my solution to this was to buy the plugable 3 port only-a-tb4/usb3-hub which let me be more selective about the other parts i used with it and I’ve been really happy with that.
It’s not cheap either but at least it’s flexible and will be useable for a long time as my needs change. I’ve been really happy with it.
I think these all in one things are always gonna cheap out on something in the end.
I'm pretty surprised that works for display passthru, especially for multiple displays. My impression had been that most TB/USB-C docks provide their display interfaces by internally being a PCIe graphics card.
Many USB-C docks use DisplayLink to create a virtual graphics card over USB, it is implemented as software that renders using your computers/laptops graphics card that then sends the output over USB to the DisplayLink controller.
Thunderbolt docks (and some USB-C docks) instead will use Alternate Mode to pass-through the DisplayPort directly from the computer/laptop to the attached monitor. There is no additional graphics card or PCIe device involved in the matter, and no virtual graphics rendering that is sending frames across USB.
DisplayLink is not great, especially on macOS, even on Windows it would cause random slow downs and in general when using it with multiple monitors it would cause random tearing and other issues. It was fine for spreadsheets and the like, but for video it broke down quickly.
Whereas alternate mode just passes through your graphics card output, so there is none of that, and instead you get the full rendering power.
There are also non-Thunderbolt USB-C docks that support DP Alt mode. E.g. I had a Lenovo USB-C Dock Gen2, which uses 2 (superspeed) lanes for DisplayPort with HBR3. If a machine supports it, it can pass through 4k@60Hz. It uses the other two lanes for USB 3.1 Gen 2 10Gbit.
Though, I would always go for a Thunderbolt Dock. The extra bandwidth is nice (e.g. most Thunderbolt Docks support two 4k@60Hz screens). Also, Thunderbolt at least offers the option of using PCIe NICs, offering alternatives to the crappy Realtek USB ethernet controllers. Be cautious - even many expensive Thunderbolt hubs use USB Realtek. However, there are also models that have an Intel I210 or I225 on PCIe.
(The story changes a bit with USB4, since it can also optionally tunnel PCIe, but I wouldn't expect cheap USB-C adapters to do that.)
Right, there are some USB-C docks that are not Thunderbolt that do DP alt mode, but many of the cheaper ones seems to come with DisplayLink technology built-in.
I have had multiple MacBook/MacBook Pro's, never had an issue with overheating while using external monitors. At one point I had 3 hooked up to my MacBook Pro.
The key thing is to not use it in clamshell mode.
Also DisplayLink wouldn't really help much with running cooler, since its drawing a virtual frame buffer using your existing graphics card anyway, although I don't know if macOS would recognize it and switch to the discrete graphics when in use vs continuing to use the iGPU.
I have two big monitors, I do not have space on my desk to keep laptop lid open (and that would be waste, because I would never even look at built-in screen anyway).
As for running cooler it really did change for me after buying DisplayLink docking station - before I would hear the fan noise constantly, now the laptop just stays quiet.
I picked this 3.2 Gen 2 hub for 10 bux, 10gbs, 3.2 usb, works great. I use it for my dual port keyboard + mouse, so I can just plug into my laptop or pc, so I only have to move 1 cable. Not sure why backwards compatible with usb 2 is a bad thing.
You’d hope so, but I wouldn’t be too confident. The Satechi USB-C hub that my wife got (reboxed Chinese design) claimed to support 4k@60Hz, except that it didn’t work. Afterwards we found that other people had the same issue. Satechi support provided some undocumented Realtek firmware updater for Windows that didn’t work.
Can confirm, but not sure about better QA of the branded ones. Company issued macbook came with a "Satechi" hub, which died within 6 months, while two other noname AliExpress ones have worked with no issue for 2 years now
USB-C hubs and my slow descent into madness
https://overengineer.dev/blog/2021/04/25/usb-c-hub-madness.h...
It was recently discussed on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30911598
One interesting takeaway for me was that there are actually some quite cheap hubs available from AliExpress and the "branded" ones are essentially the same with a logo printed on (and hopefully some additional QA).