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MacRumors Giveaway: Win a USB-C HDMI Dock With 94W Charging From CalDigit

It looks like a lot of people have had various problems with this particular CalDigit dock. The Ts3 seems to get much better reviews.

Amazon.com: Customer reviews: CalDigit USB-C HDMI Dock - 2 x HDMI 2.0, 94W Charging, Thunderbolt 3, UHS II SD Card Slot, USB C 10Gb, USB A x 3, LAN, 3.5mm Audio for Mac and PC, USB-C and Thunderbolt 4 Compatible (Dual HDMI 2.0b)

Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for CalDigit USB-C HDMI Dock - 2 x HDMI 2.0, 94W Charging, Thunderbolt 3, UHS II SD Card Slot, USB C 10Gb, USB A x 3, LAN, 3.5mm Audio for Mac and PC, USB-C and Thunderbolt 4 Compatible (Dual HDMI 2.0b) at Amazon.com. Read honest and unbiased...
www.amazon.com
 
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shamino said:
It's not so much customs, but the fact that in many places, prize winnings count as taxable income. MacRumors would need to file tax forms with the winner's taxpayer ID number in order to make it legal.

In the US, for instance, any prize worth more than $600 must be reported via a "1099-MISC" form, and many giveaways will request taxpayer ID information in order to file this form even for smaller prizes.

It is safe to assume that most countries have similar rules, each one with its own respective form, rules and penalties for non-compliance. Additionally, transferring a prize across international borders may trigger various anti-money-laundering rules, may involve tariffs and all kinds of other related issues. This will, at minimum, require more paperwork and might involve all kinds of ugly permits, depending on the value of the prize and the country involved.

In order to permit a giveaway like this to work internationally, MacRumors would need to retain a legal advisor capable of ensuring that all laws are complied with, no matter what the winner's country might be. That could easily cost far more than the value of the prize itself.

I'm actually surprised Canada is allowed to participate. But not Quebec - they must have some problematic law that the rest of Canada does not.
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In Brazil, the prize could be sent as a gift with a value of, let's say, $300. Then I could check my "customs account" (in truth, this is managed by the public mail service) and pay the tax, which would probably be almost the product's price. Still a good deal, since I'd pay $300 in taxes instead of a total of $600 ($300 plus taxes of $300).
 
maraino said:
Does anybody knows if you can connect this or similar docks to a Thunderbolt Display using Apple's Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter? And, are you able to use the camera and USB ports of the display?
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I have this dock. I purchased it with my 16" MBPR.

I haven't tested it with a Thunderbolt Display, but my TB2 based Universal Audio Apollo Twin works flawlessly with this dock using Apple's TB3 to TB2 adapter.
 
I've got one of these and it's really good. The only downside I'd say is that it can get quite warm, but then it's running two 32in monitors, a webcam, a USB-C ext hard drive and a network port to another network drive at the moment...maybe that's why lol.
 
This is not bad - but why all these dated USB-A ports?
They should at least offer a usb-c only option (at reduced speeds if necessary).
USB-A‘s heydays are over - so get rid of it :)
 
I’ve now what amounts to a long saga with CalDigit.

Had a TS3 for several years without too much trouble at the office. Since moving to WFH, and subsequently getting a TS3+ too so my wife could work from home as well, it became clear that they caused havoc with my network. Causing other devices to disconnect from the network.

After many long discussions with caldigit via email, they agreed to refund the TS3+ and recommended trying their Pro Dock as it has a different Ethernet controller.

That was sold out so I went for a refurb unit. Presumably like one of the ones reviewed on Amazon (turned out it was an Amazon return) and it died within half an hour of attaching everything.

Second refund and return.

I said to them that my patience was wearing thin but having had a fairly good experience with the TS3 and as I quite like the look and feel of their products I’d give them one last chance. I asked them to recommend which dock I should go for in light of all the problems I’ve had.

Today, the HDMI Dock arrived (like the one on this competition). I plugged everything in. Seemed to work ok. Thought I’d better put the Ethernet through its paces after the problems I had with the TS3 and TS3+.

The gigabit Ethernet port will only achieve a max throughout of 250mb/s. This compares to an Ethernet dongle that gets 950mb/s whether it is attached directly to my Mac or via the USB-C port on the HDMI dock. Plug the same dongle into one of the USB-A ports on the dock and again its limited to the 250mb/s despite those ports being described as 5gb/s ports.

Again, it seems like it is a piece of 💩 and will be returned as quickly as I can. Very disappointing and will never be buying from CalDigit ever again.

edit:
Having left it for a couple of hours unattended, the HDMI Dock seems to have stopped my MacBook sleeping. Even the displays didn’t sleep, so it was sitting there just burning through energy, displays burning through energy.

This piece of junk is being returned as soon as possible next week without a doubt.
 
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I bought one and returned it. Using with two 4k monitors over HDMI it would cause my 16" MacBook Pro to double the GPU power draw (10w->20w) causing the fans to run all the time. My understanding is HDMI is the culprit, causes the Radeon GPU to go into higher power mode constantly.

Replaced with Kensington SD5700T since my monitors also have USB-C anyway. USB-C is display port and power consumption went back down and fans are quiet. SD5700T is a real Thunderbolt hub as well and does 90w charging, so slightly less but plenty for my use.
 
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jharrell said:
I bought one and returned it. Using with two 4k monitors over HDMI it would cause my 16" MacBook Pro to double the GPU power draw (10w->20w) causing the fans to run all the time. My understanding is HDMI is the culprit, causes the Radeon GPU to go into higher power mode constantly.

Replaced with Kensington SD5700T since my monitors also have USB-C anyway. USB-C is display port and power consumption went back down and fans are quiet. SD5700T is a real Thunderbolt hub as well and does 90w charging, so slightly less but plenty for my use.
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Do you have any way of testing the Ethernet throughput on the Kensington?
 
jharrell said:
I just ran iperf3 from my Mac to my Synology through Ethernet on the hub and got around 700 Mbit/sec
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Thanks. That’s a hell of a lot better than 250. Unfortunately it isn’t available here in the UK yet

As far as I’m concerned, a dock fundamentally needs to do three things:

- gigabit ethernet
- external display
- power

Anything other features are a bonus.

In doing that, it mustn’t crash the Mac. It must reliably sleep and wake. It mustn’t intermittently cause my MacBook Pro to limit the CPU to 1ghz (painful). It mustn’t cause other devices on the network to freak out.

I’m amazed that these fundamentals seem to be so lacking from CalDigit products. I’ve really given them plenty of chances and tried numerous products trying to find one that actually works. Such a waste of time

Any other features are a bonus.

I’m contemplating one of the OWC ones that are due in the next month or so. Perhaps keeping it simple and going for a thunderbolt hub and add dongles to it for display and Ethernet. Thinking perhaps less chance of bizarre behaviours.
 
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robinp said:
Thanks. That’s a hell of a lot better than 250. Unfortunately it isn’t available here in the UK yet

As far as I’m concerned, a dock fundamentally needs to do three things:

- gigabit ethernet
- external display
- power

Anything other features are a bonus.

In doing that, it mustn’t crash the Mac. It must reliably sleep and wake. It mustn’t intermittently cause my MacBook Pro to limit the CPU to 1ghz (painful). It mustn’t cause other devices on the network to freak out.

I’m amazed that these fundamentals seem to be so lacking from CalDigit products. I’ve really given them plenty of chances and tried numerous products trying to find one that actually works. Such a waste of time

Anything other features are a bonus.

I’m contemplating one of the OWC ones that are due in the next month or so. Perhaps keeping it simple and going for a thunderbolt hub and add dongles to it for display and Ethernet. Thinking perhaps less chance of bizarre behaviours.
Click to expand...

Just ran iperf3 in reverse mode been a while since I used it, default is upload reverse mode is download, download is around 900 Mbit/sec. The Kensington SD5700T seems to be a slightly more expensive version of the OWC, main difference looks to be the power button and its in stock now, which is mainly why I went for it.

If you don't have USB-C or Thunderbolt monitors you will need adapters and if they are HDMI it may have the same issue I had with the Caldigit HDMI Dock.

So far its been pretty reliable but not 100% perfect and not sure how much its the docks fault or MacOS (Currently Big Sur 11.2). I have had one monitor come up in 30hz mode instead of 60hz once which caused the displays to swap places, had to restart MacOS to fix. Have had it not come back from sleep once or twice too. Before the dock I ran both monitors directly off USB-C using two ports on my Mac and had similar intermittent issues which have slowly gotten better since Catalina.

I use the dock for Monitors, Ethernet, hardwired mouse and keyboard, speaker connected to audio jack and web cam. and everything seems to work including waking by just hitting key on keyboard or mouse, but its not an instant wake seems to take a few seconds and flashes a couple times.
 
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Apple_Robert said:
Thanks for the clarification on docks. I have never owned one but, am thinking about it now that I have a M1.
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There are lots of cheap adapters that convert USB-C to USB-A which I would imagine work fine. I’ve got 4 or so Anker ones which seem to work fine without any problems at all. Not tried booting from a drive attached using one, but I can’t see why it would be a problem.
 
Nice give away! I have the USB-C Pro Dock, which is just like this one except it has two DisplayPort ports instead of HDMI and doesn't provide quite as much power for charging a computer. Everybody who wins this is going to be very blessed.
 
OK, well despite testing numerous times yesterday and always achieving the same slow ethernet speeds from the HDMI dock, today I thought I'd give it another test. Strangely, it seems to have improved significantly and there is no clear reason why.

Definitely seems to be issues with sleep / wake (as in, it won't stay sleeping), but I'm experimenting with different energy saving settings. I've turned off wake for network access for now and will see how that goes.

So I don't know if perhaps it downloaded a firmware update overnight or something, but the difference is stark and I cannot explain why.
 
robinp said:
I think that requires being able to boot from a drive attached the dock. From what I understand, there are no docks that allow booting from attached drives.
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The USB-C Pro dock does. My CCC backup drive is connected to mine. I know you can boot from it because that's how you enable encryption on the CCC backup, by booting from the backup.

I can't imagine a reason to buy one of these, really. Unless the power output capability trumps everything else, why would you ever choose 2x HDMI over 2x DisplayPort? The ports are exactly the same, otherwise.
 
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