Figured I'd bring awareness of this since I see no one on YouTube or social media talking about it amidst all the frenzy of these M4 Mac mini docks, and I stumbled upon it in what felt like pure chance.
I purchased an M4 Mac mini recently, and while the return of additional USB-C/Thunderbolt ports was nice, I was missing the back USB-A ports. I know the Satechi hub is popular, and I owned one for my M1 Mac mini, but since the Mac mini now has front ports, it felt redundant to have more, so I tried searching for docks that had back ports instead, but everything I found had some bizarre combination of USB-A, HDMI, 3.5mm, USB-C power, etc, which again, all felt redundant and unnecessary when all I needed was more USB-A ports. So enter the the Stouchi hub:
stouchi.net
I wasn't even sure if this was real at first since I can find no reference to it anywhere else, and even Googling it hits you with a correction for the Satechi hub, but it had exactly what I wanted, 4 USB-A ports on the back with the addition of micro/SD on the front (I don't really use it often but its nice to have anyway). Even better, a cheaper variation with no internal SSD slot was available. I personally don't trust these type of hubs to hold the data reliably and you're not getting anything close to full speed anyway.
So for $35, I decided to take the plunge. To my surprise, it seems as it was stocked locally in Los Angeles and it delivered in just a few days via Amazon shipping (which is something I'd never seen happen before either, as it was no where to be seen on Amazon).
The box was very generic looking, with no imagery alluding to the actual product itself. But it is indeed real and as depicted. A nice compact USB dock that fits the M4 Mac mini very nicely. Like the other hubs, the Mac kinda just sits into a slight depression with nothing keeping it locked in place. Also, since this dock has 4 USB-A ports, it covers the entire horizontal area, meaning there's no cutout to make the power button more reachable. Personally, I find this a better trade-off, lifting the Mac once every blue moon to turn it on isn't really a big deal if it means I get one more USB-A port than what the others provide.
As for Wi-Fi performance, I'm usually plugged in through ethernet but for the sake of testing, I left it on Wi-Fi for a week and I haven't noticed any issues. Managed to get through massive 60-100 gigabyte downloads with no interruptions.
But yeah, just throwing this out there in case there's others with a similar specific use case. It obviously isn't very ideal if you're constantly plugging things in and out, but if you have accessories and drives that are stationary/meant to always be plugged in, this works pretty well, looks very clean and won't cost you much.
I purchased an M4 Mac mini recently, and while the return of additional USB-C/Thunderbolt ports was nice, I was missing the back USB-A ports. I know the Satechi hub is popular, and I owned one for my M1 Mac mini, but since the Mac mini now has front ports, it felt redundant to have more, so I tried searching for docks that had back ports instead, but everything I found had some bizarre combination of USB-A, HDMI, 3.5mm, USB-C power, etc, which again, all felt redundant and unnecessary when all I needed was more USB-A ports. So enter the the Stouchi hub:
Mac Mini M4 Dock
Stouchi Mac Mini Stand & Hub with M.2 NVMe/SATA SSD Enclosure for Mac Mini M4/M4 Pro 2024, with 2X USB 3.2 10Gbps, 2X USB 2.0, Micro/SD 3.0, TF Card Readers 3.0-Silver Reintroducing USB-A Ports: The Stouchi Mac Mini M4 Hub meet all your connectivity needs. It features 2X USB 3.2 (10Gbps), 2X USB...
stouchi.net
I wasn't even sure if this was real at first since I can find no reference to it anywhere else, and even Googling it hits you with a correction for the Satechi hub, but it had exactly what I wanted, 4 USB-A ports on the back with the addition of micro/SD on the front (I don't really use it often but its nice to have anyway). Even better, a cheaper variation with no internal SSD slot was available. I personally don't trust these type of hubs to hold the data reliably and you're not getting anything close to full speed anyway.
So for $35, I decided to take the plunge. To my surprise, it seems as it was stocked locally in Los Angeles and it delivered in just a few days via Amazon shipping (which is something I'd never seen happen before either, as it was no where to be seen on Amazon).
As for Wi-Fi performance, I'm usually plugged in through ethernet but for the sake of testing, I left it on Wi-Fi for a week and I haven't noticed any issues. Managed to get through massive 60-100 gigabyte downloads with no interruptions.
But yeah, just throwing this out there in case there's others with a similar specific use case. It obviously isn't very ideal if you're constantly plugging things in and out, but if you have accessories and drives that are stationary/meant to always be plugged in, this works pretty well, looks very clean and won't cost you much.