Same. I prefer the hub, and not having wires flying out from every side, and Ethernet I don’t also need to move around between my Mac and work computer. The single cable swap is the way.
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CalDigit Launches Element 5 Hub With Thunderbolt 5
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The element 4 is my go-to hub, have three of them around the house. All of the others have a ton of ports that I'd never use. Worst case, I use a dongle. Highly recommended product.
Exactly. What is the point of a dock that you then need dongles for?
My caldigit TB2 dock has these ports.
Edit: I guess it’s labeled a hub not a dock.
Can you please list windows laptops with TB5 ports, i am looking to buy one, can't find any.
Surface pro is using TB4.
Dell XPS is using USB4.
it is sad that we can't find good windows laptop with TB5.
can you please tell which windows laptops are using TB5 ?
I want to buy new windows laptop, want to make sure that laptop has TB5 (future proof).
Surface pro is still using TB4.
Dell XPS is using USB4, not even TB4.
it is sad that we can't find good windows laptop with TB5.
if i can't find a good windows laptop with full TB5 implementation i will have to settle for MacBook Pro. even if it is partial implementation i prefer TB5 to USB4 or TB4.
Uh, it's called a hub, not a dock. It's literally right in the name.
I personally have zero need for dock with Ethernet, eSATA (who still uses that?!?), and HDMI. I have a Mac mini with both 10 Gbps Ethernet and 8K HDMI already. Hubs are much more appropriate for me. BTW, my Thunderbolt 4 hubs came with bonus HDMI dongles in the box... which I don't need.
Are you in Canada? Cuz it's showing up for me as CA$369 in Canada, even when I click on the US purchase link.
EDIT:
I turned on my browser VPN and chose USA, and now the US purchase link shows $249.95 for me.
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I believe the biggest factors are power usage (10G-BaseT pulls alot of power) and the lack of any USB 10Gb ethernet chipsets. So you need to carve off dedicated PCIe from the TB bridge/switch. Realtek does have a 5G-BaseT chip. So I wouldn't be surprised if we see that in the Full spec Caldigit & OWC TB5 docking stations. Once again the power draw is the limit. They'll need to get a USB 10Gb-BaseT chip power low enough to finally offer it.
The other issue with PCIe attached via TB is sleep/wake-up. It seems like no-one including Apple has gotten that nailed. Which is why all the TB 10GB-Ethernet and 25GB-Ethernet adapters have reliability issues.
It's honestly a TB4/TB5 switch. It's doesn't just repeat the signal like a HUB does. It actually routes the TB packets to the correct port. As far as I know the max is a 4 port switch, which always means 1 uplink + 3 downlink. Obviously you can daisy chain of each of the 3 x 3 = 9 from the same up side port. In theory someone could build a dock/switch that had all 4 TB4/5 chips wired together with the 9 downstream ports. The beauty of a TB port vs a USB-C port, is it can actually do alt-mode like any root level TB port can.
What chipset does Apple use in its desktop Macs? Their 10 Gbps ports seem to run cool. Either that or they are cooled well.
As for the Realtek 5 Gbps chip, doesn't that max out much lower than 5 Gbps on macOS, meaning it's not that much more useful than 2.5 Gbps?
Do you mean sleep/wake with Ethernet, or sleep/wake in general? My USB4/TB NVMe SSDs have no sleep/wake issues at all (in contrast to my USB3 SSDs).
One clarification. USB-C hubs are cheap and available. You can get a 4 port one for $20 (no PD in) or $30 (with pd in).
There is a big difference between USB-C hubs and TB4/5 "Hubs" The TB "Hubs" are more like PCIe/Ethernet Switches that have to process the TB packets. Which why they're more expensive. But the Kensington one is great deal right now. Also prior to TB4 thunderbolt "hubs" didn't exist. The TB chips only supported 2 ports, allowing at the most daisy chaining.
USB-C
UGREEN Powered USB C Hub, PD 100W 10Gbps 5 in 1 USB C 3.2 Adapter with 4 USB-C 3.2 & 100W PD Ports, USB C
($20 on Amazon)
The Belkin Connect USB-C™ to 4-Port USB-C Hub (4 USB-C 3.2 Gen2 Ports & 100W PD ($45 on Amazon)
TB4
But a TB4/5 switch is different. The best price for one right now. (1 upstream + 3 downstream) is the Kensington SD2600T Thunderbolt 4 Hub ($67 on Amazon). It uses the same 4 port TB4 chip all of the TB4 dock/"Hubs" use.
That's a great deal for the Thunderbolt 4 model, even cheaper than the near identical Amazon Basics one. The Kensington pricing has been fluctuating, but recently dropped dramatically.
I'm a bit confused by this. You say it's a hardware limitation but then say there would need to be an (software?) update to allow it?
My understanding is macOS does not allow the technology that Windows uses to get 3 displays over one cable: display stream compression.
The UASP and NVME spec handles the sleep wake well. The Ethernet via PCIe is over TB is really niche and doesn't doesn't have a specific protocol to handle sleep and wake like external storage controllers do.
Yes the Mac Desktops have better cooling and PCIe is rarely starved for power. It's definitely possible to build a TB dock with 10Gb PCIe ethernet, but it creates engineering and support issues that the USB interfaces don't have. I'm sure someone could build it well and write a custom driver, it's just such a niche market.
Yea the RealTek RTL8157 is probably not a great option unless they manage NCM support. But I could see the TB docks forcing that along better than the Ugreen use case.
That all being said apparently OWC has one TB3 dock with 10GBaseT. I had to look it up. I think they shave off one TB4 port for a single DP port and the 10GBaseT.
Thunderbolt Pro Dock $349
Yep I have the bigger version(SD5700T) of it, that includes a few more USB-A ports, SD card reader and ethernet. It's well built, aluminum, good Power Supply, quality ports. All the areas that you could cut corners.
One caveat is that the Amazon model is 85W PD, while the Kensington model is 65W PD.
Honey, CalDigit shrunk the power supply! Didn't see this mentioned anywhere yet, but thought it was noteworthy and deserved some attention. The old power supply was huge, nearly twice as big as the hub.
I'd probably trade in my TS4 for this if I could. I would have went with Element 4 Hub, but didn't like the 60W charging and lack of USB-C ports. The Element 5 Hub solves both of those problems.
I'd probably trade in my TS4 for this if I could. I would have went with Element 4 Hub, but didn't like the 60W charging and lack of USB-C ports. The Element 5 Hub solves both of those problems.
I'd love to understand you're use case. I work in Enterprise Storage and Network design and support. I've thought a lot about a TB5 to ethernet bridge. Mostly for the SMB Video/Production world. The idea being you could bridge into a larger 10Gb/25Gb/40Gb Ethernet fabric but allow (3) TB port's for up to (3) Macs per bridge. This would eliminate any need for drivers or dedicated ethernet controllers. Modern Macs are fast enough that even 10Gb or 20Gb shouldn't be much overhead.
I think the issue is MST (Multi Stream Transport) chaining which allows you to daisy-chain multiple monitors over a single DisplayPort stream (there’s 2 of those per Thunderbolt link). On MacOS, daisy-chained DisplayPort screens just mirror. Even Intel Macs lacked MST Daisy-chaining - and they were basically the same architecture as PCs, suggesting it was a MacOS rather than a hardware thing - but I guess only Apple know if Apple Silicon hardware could physically do it.
Slow-charging. At a glance, you know USB-A is going to be limited to 7.5 watts. That means slower charging of your Apple Watch, phone, etc. Slower charging is easier on lithium batteries, with longer life before needing to replace with a new battery. For your shiny things with USB-C, buy a USB-A (preferably 3.2) to USB-C adapter for a few dollars.
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Heh. Nothing like that for me. 2.5 Gbps is fine for me as it maxes out my 1.9 Gbps internet access, and that's what I upgraded my home Ethernet network to. The Ethernet backhaul in my house is now completely 2.5G, just because it was cheap to do so. I considered 10G but the equipment cost was too high and I literally have no use for it. I had considered upgrading my NAS to 10G but again the equipment cost would have been high, and considering I'd be the only person in the entire house to use it, it actually made more sense for me to move all of my main storage locally. So, now I have a couple of USB 4 / Thunderbolt NVMe drives locally at my desktop instead of all my stuff on the NAS. And I don't need huge volumes because I don't work in video. My computer work is mostly with office type apps. The only video I do is dabbling in kid activity videos and the like.
Ironically though, I know some people who do work in film and TV professionally, but they have lesser hardware than I do. These people occasionally work on stuff like low budget documentaries, etc.
This is correct. I'm not sure why Apple doesn't supported MST for different displays. They do support it for single larger displays like 5k and 8k on older DP standards. But have never supported MST for separate displays. It's the reason MacOS can't drive 2 (non-mirrored) monitors from the less expensive USB-C docks. Yet Windows can.
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Makes sense. I actually have a 10Gb Core switch at home, with a TrueNAS connected. My Mac Studio with a 10Gb link still can't saturate it for NAS. You really need a multi-threads read/write application to get above 300MB/s with NAS. So ironically 2.5Gb is a nice upgrade from 1Gb. But going above 2.5Gb just creates all kinds of hurdles to optimize, beyond that. If I really optimize NFS, I can get get to 600MB/s for large block transfers, but that is rare. Thats why I love these new cheap 2.5Gb to 10Gb switches. They're perfect for that type of setup.