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Its always a feel good story to help out an emerging and or innovative technology, but sadly more times than not its being operated by and profited from some slick talking schmuck looking to make easy liars money than employ good engeeering and technical staff to make these things actually make it to market and function… they spend their time creating fancy pitch decks to present to people they think they can get loads of money from to fund their and their cronies salaries, and high fashioned life styles… all to keep up the impressions than anything… its sad that these nobel crowd source groups get polluted and then have to carry the reputation of that… as some have already attested to
 
Never Hyper. Bought their 100W GAN on KS a while back. Damned thing could’ve manage to charge my phone and iPad at the same time. Sent them a video, they sent replacement, happened with the “new” one… threw it in the bin and haven’t looked back.
I'm sorry to hear that. I backed the same charger and have two, both of which work great. (And the one has been used every single day I received it.) There are a lot of stories like yours about defective and overheating Hyper chargers; glad I possibly lucked out with a pair of good ones. They're so good and compact for the power I considered getting one or two more.
 
Remember if you "buy" it on kickstarter, and it ends up being a flop, whch often is the case, you lose your money.

MacRumors will still get their commision tho.
 
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"Available on Kickstarter..."

I stopped reading right there. Nope is my response for anything like this. I did buy a Keychron mechanical keyboard on Kickstarter in May. But I knew there was little chance the company would take the money and run, or the product would turn out a piece of junk.

It's a K8 Pro, and it's amazingly good for the price.
 
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Accessory maker Hyper, known for its range of chargers, hubs, and battery packs, recently introduced the HyperDrive Thunderbolt 4 Power Hub, which it says is the world's first Goshen Ridge Thunderbolt 4 hub with an integrated power source.

hyper-power-hub.jpg

Available on Kickstarter, the hub includes a built-in GaN power source that alleviates the need for an extra power brick and allows it to operate with a standard power cable, ultimately resulting in a more streamlined setup.

The Thunderbolt 4 Power Hub includes three 40Gbps/15W Thunderbolt 4 downstream ports for data transfer and accessory charging and one 40Gbps/96W power delivery Thunderbolt 4 port, but there are no other included ports. The Thunderbolt 4 ports support dual 4K 60Hz or single 8K 30Hz display connectivity, though dual displays are not compatible with M1 or M2 MacBooks.

The hub works with with the 2016 MacBook Pro or later, the 2018 MacBook Air or later, and the 2021 iPad Pro or later, as well as Windows and ChromeOS devices.

The HyperDrive Thunderbolt 4 Power Hub can be preordered from Kickstarter for $179, a 40 percent discount off of the planned retail price, and it is set to ship out in November 2022.

Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Kickstarter. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.

Article Link: Hyper Debuts New Thunderbolt 4 Hub With Integrated GaN Power Source
Would love to buy it but no more Indegogo or Kickstarter for me. Will gladly order when it's a real product.
 
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I would back this if:

1. It had at least a 2.5GB ethernet port built in.
2. It shipped to Canada
3. Kickstarter hasn't burned me a billion times.
 
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Other than having the power supply integrated in the unit, I personally don't see the appeal of this, but it's already gotten a lot of backers, so maybe others understand this more than I do.

- Limited selection of ports
- Cable mess since all the Thunderbolt ports are up front (so I don't see how this minimized your "footprint")
 
Not at all. My OWC is connected to my iMac so the power brick is not an issue since I have many things with bricks and it's all neatly managed underneath my desk.

This will be for my MBP 14" and having it smaller and more portable is a plus for me.
Well, it's the GaN aspect that makes me consider it obsolete. I dumped all my pre-GaN adapters. Then again, my wording could stand improvement. Don't want to sound like a Wall Wart fanatic ( I am )
 
I’m seeing a lot of ‘you lost me at kickstarter’ in this thread. Just an FYI for those who may have heard things but don’t know the full story: There are a lot of reputable, established brands on kickstarter. Many of them are like Hyper, who sell products outside of kickstarter, but for various reasons still use the crowdfunding model at times. Nothing in life is certain, but if you back a company like Hyper you’re *almost* guaranteed a return. Now, Hyper may have some other issues, but my point is that kickstarter isn’t always a crapshoot. If you back the right products you’re pretty safe.
 
That's not entirely true, there are several projects for digital files where they're available, but the creator is looking for funding before wide release. It's definitely true for most projects though. Takes some sweet time to get your orders...
I agree with davidjschloss. It should say „will … / to be available“, or „available in October“.
 
I have the Caldigit Element and it is great, but like someone said in another comment about the OWC hub, the brick is larger than the hub. I am back and forth on getting another one. Hard to say if I would take a chance on another brand when the Caldigit hubs have such a great track record.
 
It took them so long to ship their last pre order on Indiegogo, and then the product kinda sucked, there is no way I would buy from them again.
 
Every time MacRumors advertise for Hyper - I sadly have to post this:

In my experience and opinion - Hyper products are usually always "not quite there or ready" - I have multiple of their previous products and they all have some major flaw or another. And once Hyper support realises they can't woo you with tech speak they just stop responding.

So please before you spend money with Hyper - go and READ comments on one of their previous 13 Kickstarter projects. It is HARD to find happy consumers in the comments.

So only back Hyper products if you are ready to THROW AWAY your money.
 
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I'm sorry to hear that. I backed the same charger and have two, both of which work great. (And the one has been used every single day I received it.) There are a lot of stories like yours about defective and overheating Hyper chargers; glad I possibly lucked out with a pair of good ones. They're so good and compact for the power I considered getting one or two more.
So with your HyperJuice chargers - if you have a normal USB device charging and fx an iPad - what happens when your normal USB device is close to full charge?

With my HyperJuice's (3x) they re-adjust their output - causing the power to the iPad to be disconnected for 30 seconds - and then reconnected. That makes the iPad BEEP for charger connected. It does the same on my Mac as well (power on/power off when one of the other devices are close to fully charged or absorb "little" current only)

So every time a device "needs" change - the HyperJuice disconnects all loads - and then reconnects them. That is a really stupid and damaging way to charge your devices. It can lead to early battery failure.

The only way the HyperJuice works "correctly" is if you ONLY connect 1 device at a time. Which is pointless on a 4 output charger.
 
Any idea why certain TB4 docks can support dual external 4k@60hz like the Sonnettech Echo 11 and Startech TB4CDOCK? Sure there is a big price difference, was wondering what component made the difference.

Look for two possible reasons.
- They use a Displaylink adapter in the dock.
- Dual monitor is limited to computers which support dual monitors
 
When I saw the brand I had to chime in.

I backed the 245W GaN charger & battery bank with the screen back on October 24th of last year. There were delays (expected with shortages) and I completely understand that crowdfunding is not a guaranteed thing.

I had purchased a device from them when USB-C started gaining momentum and needed a good hub that provided HDMI out- I ended up getting one with 3 USB-A ports, SD/MicroSD card slots, HDMI, gigabit, passthrough charging (albeit it a little slow) and a Qi charger with a kickstand (which unfortunately couldn’t support the weight of my phones- but worked great when not upright) and it’s been a workhorse compared to Apple’s HDMI adapter which failed after 2 months. The application for the device for me is to output music videos from my MacBook at various events. I’ve chucked this thing in my DJ bag for years and it’s cosmetically worn, but 100% flawless in performance.

That being said, I was eager to order this stuff back in October.

The issue I had with Hyper is their lack of communication. We ALL would have been understanding if they constantly updated regarding the challenges they faced with delivery but, they opted to push campaign updates to promote new products about 80% of the time- verses giving us updates about our campaign. It was annoying. I’ll say it again, they used THE CAMPAIGN UPDATE to push new products and were slipping delivery dates from Nov/Dec onwards with very little communication.

So why am I typing this. I know they have made good products, but their customer service / PR is atrocious. I got my charger and battery bank YESTERDAY (August 2nd 2022) almost 10 months after the contribution and 8 months after the expected delivery.

So if you back them, just remember, they’ll most likely deliver, but don’t expect a lot of communication.

If you want to see how bad this got, check this link to the discussion thread on their Indiegogo page.

 
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I’m dumb. What is the use case for this? Does it allow multiple computers to share one display?

Does it just add TB4 ports? I feel like between Apple computers and maybe monitors, there’s never a shortage of Thunderbolt.
 
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