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CalDigit Introduces USB-C Dock With 10 Ports and Up to 94W Charging for Macs [Updated]
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No HDMI 2.1, No DP, and only 3x USB-A? Lol no sale. Sticking with my TS3+ and looking forward to a proper professional grade replacement for that. TS4+ when?
Hard pass on Caldigit products. The haven't updated the Ethernet drivers for the "original" USB-C dock for Big Sur. I bought it a little over a year ago. It looks like they stop supporting "old" products once their shiny new one is released.
Yeah, I believe I did mention that, and/or the fact that there aren’t really any USB4 devices out. This Anker hub at least has more ports. With all the new stuff going USB-C type for connectivity, it’s a pain to find a hub with more than the host connection port being C-type or costing an arm and six legs.
In the end, it will come down to the users needs and cash limits.
Well, right, there aren't any USB4 devices available yet, AFAIK. But we do have multiple hosts (Apple M1 Macs and Intel Tiger Lake systems), and I think it's an important distinction because there are a few actual Thunderbolt4/USB4 docks available as well (OWC Thunderbolt Hub & Thunderbolt Dock and Kensington SD5700T).
Although I'm a huge fan of CalDigit I would like to have seen a few more Thunderbolt ports on it. For the money it's not a bad deal but I'd definitely pay a bit more for more ports. Like the new Kensington TB4 dock... Mind you, it does have a few HDMI ports. Would be sweet if they were HDMI 2.1
Question? Are there a lot of consumer goods that even use the top end 3.2gen USB protocols? I have a number of SSDs that I have picked up over the years and I don’t even think they are even capable of using the full bandwidth of 3.2. (Samsung T7 is my latest). I guess it will always be a race, were the connection type speeds out pace the consumer good adaptation rate (sometimes by generations).
The top 3.2 protocol is gen 2x2, but that one is very rarely supported on any drive or even host. In fact, you have to use a PCIe add-in card to use 2x2, Thunderbolt does not natively have gen 2x2 but it does have gen 2. There is a Western Digital drive or 2 which has gen 2x2. The justification for 2x2 is mostly for desktops that don't have Thunderbolt (has to be supported on the motherboard and many don't support it) but they can add a 2x2 card easily.
Gen 2 meaning 10 Gbps USB is on most of the new class of external drives. Look at Western Digital or Lacie or Samsung or others and most of their new drives are 10 Gbps. The actual drive speed depends on the underlying drive speed as well as the internal drive interface. You often do see gen 2 drives connected internally with NVMe and they can go over 1 GBps which is nearly as fast as the gen 2 interface can handle (1.25 GBps = 10 Gbps). But some drives still use SATA internally and they will be limited to 600 MBps at the highest (minus some for protocol overhead). That's for SSDs, granted, since HDDs at their fastest are at 240 MBps or so for the fastest drives I've seen (even 15000 RPM drives aren't as fast as somewhat fast SSDs).
Big Sur has an ethernet driver for the USB-C dock built in; there's no need for Caldigit's driver at all.
Your average cluebie doesn't know what DisplayPort is (ever seen a moron try to force a HDMI cable into a DP?) so some bright boy thinks everything should be HDMI, because after all, the cluebie can hook up their TV set.
The USB-C Pro dock is great because it has two DP ports and zero HDMI. This... no, I wouldn't buy it just because of the HDMI.
USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (a.k.a. SuperSpeed USB 20Gbps) is sort of an odd counterexample. ASMedia makes a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 to PCIe NVMe bridge chip that has found its way into a bunch of external SSDs and enclosures such as the SanDisk Extreme PRO Portable SSD V2. However, PCs that support USB 3.2 dual-lane (Gen 2x2) operation are exceedingly rare, as each port currently requires a discrete host controller and USB Type-C port controller.
I'm almost wondering if dual-lane USB3 will end up an orphaned technology, as neither Intel nor Apple included support for it in their latest Thunderbolt/USB4 implementations. AMD has worked closely with ASMedia in the past for their chipsets though, so perhaps they will integrate USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 into future products.
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I don’t know what a cluebie is but as I said I understand the “lowest common denominator” approach for cheap USB-C hubs where it’s just as likely to be used on the go with projectors or tvs or whatver. $20+ type hubs.
this is not cheap, not portable and not aimed at joe sixpack computer users.
Yes agreed. I'd rather use A->C adaptors for any older A-type cables and over time that need will die out.
It's funny cause my older CalDigit Pro dock has DP but not HDMI. "Ok fine, I'll just use a DP to HDMI adapter..." Nope, somehow that dock specifically doesn't work with those unless they're non-passive. IDK why it's so hard for a dock to just be cool and have both HDMI and DP.
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I thought HDMI 2.1 was comparable to DP 1.4. The problem is this doesn't support HDMI 2.1, only 2.0.
On a recent FCPXSummit conference this last November there was a panel with some people one of which was OWC’s head. He was explaining that Thunderbolt 4 is just a marketing thing and a “tightening” on the PC side of things because on that side of the computer industry they didn’t fully support all the thunderbolt tidbits consistently between manufacturers, some controllers had two-ways channels, others sometimes depending on what was connected, some had proper Daisy chaining, others didn’t, so on and so forth. He said that Apple pretty much support Thunderbolt 3 as it was intended as soon as it came out on the MacBook Pros of the day and from a user point of view, a MacBook TB3 has zero difference with a windows PC TB4.
(If I recall it properly that is)
If that’s the case then this dock seems less and less appealing? On the Max Tech gt channel, they tried the OWC’s multi thunderbolt hub and they connect tons of stuff including XDR display.
Amazing, how do you do this? Is it Blender? C4D?
