Wow. What a quagmire this is.
I have a MacBook Air docking into my Thunderbolt 27" monitor with an Elgato Thunderbolt dock (supports USB 3 and miniDisplay port).
Trouble free, with USB 3 HDDs and a USB 3 SSD plugged into the Elgato dock.
Then I decided to buy a new MacBook 12 2017 i5.
For the past 3 days I have been going back and forth over
(a) keep the Apple Thunderbolt monitor (I'm ok with the resolution for now but the MacBook screen my upset that status quo) and replace the Elgato dock with a USB-C or thunderbolt 3 dock
(b) sell the Apple Thunderbolt monitor and buy a 4K monitor with USB 3 and USB-C ports (or enough to hang a dongle off it)
The sub £200 ($265 USD) docks (eg. OWC USB-3 10 port) reportedly aren’t right, the Elgato, Caldigit and OWC Thunderbolt 3 docks are £300+ ($395 USD) and I don’t really need the super fast transfer speeds as my use of the connected drives is for offloaded VMWare Fusion Windows builds and Carbon Copy Cloner backups.
I just want to be able to easily dock and undock and keep my existing backup / 2nd tier storage going.
The big question is how to choose the right 4k monitor / dongle combo. It seems a good opportunity to spend money on a reaonsable 4k monitor with a serviceable USB-C dongle rather than loads on a high end dongle to keep my Apple Thunderbolt display.
I need 4 x USB 3 ports, 3 for my external drives and one for a USB stick for occasional data exchange. I don’t mind buying and extra MacBook charger for offsite use enabling me to leave the supplied charger with the desk / dock setup.
Thanks in advance for any help.
I have a MacBook Air docking into my Thunderbolt 27" monitor with an Elgato Thunderbolt dock (supports USB 3 and miniDisplay port).
Trouble free, with USB 3 HDDs and a USB 3 SSD plugged into the Elgato dock.
Then I decided to buy a new MacBook 12 2017 i5.
For the past 3 days I have been going back and forth over
(a) keep the Apple Thunderbolt monitor (I'm ok with the resolution for now but the MacBook screen my upset that status quo) and replace the Elgato dock with a USB-C or thunderbolt 3 dock
(b) sell the Apple Thunderbolt monitor and buy a 4K monitor with USB 3 and USB-C ports (or enough to hang a dongle off it)
The sub £200 ($265 USD) docks (eg. OWC USB-3 10 port) reportedly aren’t right, the Elgato, Caldigit and OWC Thunderbolt 3 docks are £300+ ($395 USD) and I don’t really need the super fast transfer speeds as my use of the connected drives is for offloaded VMWare Fusion Windows builds and Carbon Copy Cloner backups.
I just want to be able to easily dock and undock and keep my existing backup / 2nd tier storage going.
The big question is how to choose the right 4k monitor / dongle combo. It seems a good opportunity to spend money on a reaonsable 4k monitor with a serviceable USB-C dongle rather than loads on a high end dongle to keep my Apple Thunderbolt display.
I need 4 x USB 3 ports, 3 for my external drives and one for a USB stick for occasional data exchange. I don’t mind buying and extra MacBook charger for offsite use enabling me to leave the supplied charger with the desk / dock setup.
Thanks in advance for any help.