It's easy to get that impression when you're buying stuff from the big box store, because it's all race to the bottom type stuff.
When I run into this issue in any product category, I can solve it by searching for a solution from an "industrial" or "commercial" supplier. It'll cost 10x, but it'll usually work, and if it doesn't you'll at least be able to talk to someone who knows what they're doing.
In just about any product category, there is very little quality difference within the same order of magnitude in cost.
I got a box, some usb cables that have a female end and are fitted to mate to the box. If you are curious, it’s a box made for pro-audio equipment with precut holes. The holes are made for xlr ports, and the usb cables are terminated with xlr ports.
Now I have a usb hub where all four ports are wired directly to my motherboard’s ports. I probably should write a blog post with a parts list.
I managed to get a couple of good ones. While they're more like docking stations, Kingston's, now discontinued, Nucleum and UGreen's wares are all good.
If you go higher level, of course there's Thunderbolt docks, but you can't make them cheaply, so they're generally good.
I've yet to come across truly reliable Thunderbolt 3 and above stations. Seems like every brand has, like this 7 port wonder in the article, lots of 5 star reviews. When you dig deep into the weeds of the reviews, Reddit, user forums, etc., you find the undercurrent of people who actually bother to check the stats reported by their OS, or have disconnect issues, etc, etc.
I'm somewhat sympathetic because from what I can tell engineering something capable of pushing that much data requires some exquisite engineering for every part of the process (chips on your computer, your computers port, your cables, the dock, the cable into the end device and the device and its port and chip). But still, they present these products like they're bulletproof.
It's possible I've had bad luck. A Caldigit TS3 had issues with dropping external drives and becoming unresponsive, then died after 2 years. Caldigit TS4 bricked itself after about a year. Got an OWC Thunderbolt Dock now and it just decides sometimes to stop communicating to anything new plugged in until you power cycle it.
I use Dell Thunderbolt docks because that's what my employer gives us and as such I've collected a few of them. I've had zero issues with them. The only complaint is that the power button on the dock only seems to work with Dell laptops, not a huge issue since I don't think that's a typical feature anyway.
I was about to say caldigit and then you called them out. I have had a TS3 for six years and it still going strong and I have had basically zero compatibility issues across a range of (Mac) devices and peripherals.
It's easy to get that impression when you're buying stuff from the big box store, because it's all race to the bottom type stuff.
When I run into this issue in any product category, I can solve it by searching for a solution from an "industrial" or "commercial" supplier. It'll cost 10x, but it'll usually work, and if it doesn't you'll at least be able to talk to someone who knows what they're doing.
In just about any product category, there is very little quality difference within the same order of magnitude in cost.
I recently built a usb hub.
I got a box, some usb cables that have a female end and are fitted to mate to the box. If you are curious, it’s a box made for pro-audio equipment with precut holes. The holes are made for xlr ports, and the usb cables are terminated with xlr ports.
Now I have a usb hub where all four ports are wired directly to my motherboard’s ports. I probably should write a blog post with a parts list.
So it's not a "hub", but a box around extension cables?
I managed to get a couple of good ones. While they're more like docking stations, Kingston's, now discontinued, Nucleum and UGreen's wares are all good.
If you go higher level, of course there's Thunderbolt docks, but you can't make them cheaply, so they're generally good.
I've yet to come across truly reliable Thunderbolt 3 and above stations. Seems like every brand has, like this 7 port wonder in the article, lots of 5 star reviews. When you dig deep into the weeds of the reviews, Reddit, user forums, etc., you find the undercurrent of people who actually bother to check the stats reported by their OS, or have disconnect issues, etc, etc.
I'm somewhat sympathetic because from what I can tell engineering something capable of pushing that much data requires some exquisite engineering for every part of the process (chips on your computer, your computers port, your cables, the dock, the cable into the end device and the device and its port and chip). But still, they present these products like they're bulletproof.
It's possible I've had bad luck. A Caldigit TS3 had issues with dropping external drives and becoming unresponsive, then died after 2 years. Caldigit TS4 bricked itself after about a year. Got an OWC Thunderbolt Dock now and it just decides sometimes to stop communicating to anything new plugged in until you power cycle it.
I use Dell Thunderbolt docks because that's what my employer gives us and as such I've collected a few of them. I've had zero issues with them. The only complaint is that the power button on the dock only seems to work with Dell laptops, not a huge issue since I don't think that's a typical feature anyway.
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I was about to say caldigit and then you called them out. I have had a TS3 for six years and it still going strong and I have had basically zero compatibility issues across a range of (Mac) devices and peripherals.
I've generally found that the more expensive, branded USB C hubs are more trash than the cheap generics