Update with the full history:
Having bought one of the new 2020 13" Macbook Pros (4 x Thunderbolt port model), I needed a hub/docking station to connect up my external drives and other peripherals. I went through a lot of the product reviews and comparisons and the CalDigit TS3+ comes up as favourite many times, and with a total of 15 ports looked like the best bang per buck.
I received my hub the following day through Prime. The hub is certainly a decent piece of kit; solidly built of aluminium and the build quality is excellent. The hub comes with a massive brick of a power supply and a quite short TB3 cable.
I downloaded the support files from CalDigit's website and expected to be up in business. I connected it up to the Mac using the supplied TB3 cable, the blue power light on the hub illuminated but no hub was showing up in the CalDigit Docking Station Utility. In other words, no communication between the hub and the Mac.
So, I next sent a message to CalDigit's customer service centre. They replied suggesting that I should try an NVRAM and SMC reset. Bearing in mind that the Mac was brand new out of the box I doubted very much if this would cure the problem, but I gave it a try anyway - to no success. I informed CalDigit of this and they suggested that the hub was faulty and that I should return it to Amazon for a refund. This I did and Amazon credited my account once the return had been confirmed at the Post Office.
So, I thought let's give it another try. These things can happen. And so I ordered another hub from Amazon, arriving the following day.
This time when I connected everything up with partial success. All of my backup hard drives showed up, ethernet port worked, card reader worked, audio out worked, USB ports worked. Everything worked except the Dell 2417 external display monitor, which I had connected using a DP to HDMI adaptor. The Dell didn't show up at all in System Preferences.
So, back to the CalDigit website to look for fixes in their knowledge base, but nothing on the subject except their recommendation of using an active DP to HDMI adaptor. Mine was a regular non-powered adaptor so I thought that this must be the source of the problem. £20 lighter and a few days later I was in possession of a CalDigit branded active adaptor, which I promptly connected up...and still nothing showing up for my external display!
Yet another email off to CalDigit and a quick reply received with the following:
"At the time we weren’t aware of issues with the new 2020 MacBooks however, since then we have come into some new information.
Our engineers have been investigating into the brand new 2020 MacBooks and we’ve had detailed reports from several of our customers who have tried many different brands of docks, from OWC, Kensington, Elgato and ours and none of them have been able to output a monitor connection via the latest chipsets in these Macs. There are a lot of issues with the new Intel chips, especially the 10th Gen on the 2020 MacBooks and not supporting monitor connections from Thunderbolt docking stations and only works with adapters.
We’re still investigating into this but our engineers suspect that only Apple will be able to fix this as it’s not something we’re able to change as it’s laptop based and not our product. Until a fix has been provided either via an OS update or an Apple supplemental update we, sadly, are unable to provide any more information or troubleshooting steps at this moment in time"
So, CalDigit did know that there were compatibility issues with the 2020 Macbooks, but decided not to make this available in the public domain. Shame on you!
My next step was to order a Thunderbolt 3 to DP cable. This arrived the next day and I connect the Dell to one of my Mac's precious Thunderbolt ports. This time I had success and was able to hide my Mac away on it's under-desk shelf and to enjoy the cooling pad.
Some 3 or 4 days later and then all of a sudden I lost the internet. My suspicion was initially the TalkTalk router, but the WiFi was working fine and I got a connection using the same RJ45 cable to my smart TV and to another laptop. A short time later when playing a You Tube video, I wasn't getting any audio. Here's me thinking it was an issue with the Harmon Kardon Soundsticks, but having then connected them up to the other laptop, it wasn't.
So, now I have a partially functional CalDigit TS3+ with a presumably dead audio out and ethernet port.
Off goes another email to CalDigit customer support (that was 5 days ago) and I haven't received the courtesy of a reply.
This isn't a knock of CalDigit and I think the TS3+ is an incredibly well built, solid and hugely functional hub / dock. It takes up very little space on the edge of my desk and it offers me all of the connectivity that I need for my peripherals. Competitor hubs generally have a bigger desktop footprint, have fewer ports and come with a higher price tag.
I'll wait until later this week to check the ethernet and audio ports again, but it looks like this baby will be going back to Amazon for a refund again...
