Hubs are one of the reasons I pushed my brother to get a ThinkPad for University. He has all the ports he wants, no need to carry a stupid USB hub.
Thanks for sharing. This is very timely because my gaming pc had it's ethernet port fried during a lightning storm this weekend. I grabbed my anker "Anker USB C Hub, PowerExpand 6-in-1 USB C PD Ethernet Hub". One thing I noticed is that it appears to have a different ethernet than your anker device. I'm seeing a ASIX AX88179 USB 3.0 to Gigabit Ethernet Adapter.
I'm very much a novice in this space, but is using a USB ethernet adapter preferable to a wireless access point that is close to my machine? And if so, does it make any different if my USB ethernet adapter also is used for additional USB ports? And if I am shopping just for an ethernet adapter, what manufacturer controller should I be trying to find for a windows machine?
is using a USB ethernet adapter preferable to a wireless access point that is close to my machine?
Almost certainly. Always go wired when possible. Not only will the wired device be faster, there will be more bandwidth available for other devices still using wireless. Wireless is a shared transmission medium you want as few devices using it as possible.
Total side note but the utility knife pictured is the Stanley FatMax utility knife. It’s not perfect but of the 6 or so I’ve tried, it’s the one I hate the least.
This is why I basically buy all my minor electronics off Aliexpress. All of those "air pods" are all the same. The $60 are the same as the $40, which are exactly the same as the $8 ones, they just have fancier packaging and English insert that is actually readable.
I'd really like a tiny USB hub with 2 to 3 ports (say 2x A and 1x C) and a mSD reader, as an accessory to my phone or tablet.
I don't get why everything needs to be so large and overengineered.
There's a pretty large market of people who want to use a desktop, with its large, dual monitors, high-capacity external storage, printer, high-speed wired network, physical mouse/input device when they're in their office, but still have the flexibility to carry a relatively high performance computer with all their stuff to meetings.
Simple usb dongle/expanders are much easier - I've got a 4 port with all As, a usb-mSD adapter, and a A/C adapter, and I don't think I paid $30 for the whole deal. Something like https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09MLRPTT2
I don’t know why it has taken so many tries for the original writer to realize this. I did the same mistake back in 2020 with a hub rebranded that I paid 80 euros and after I saw that the charging power this hub is providing is capped at 70 watts, fired up AliExpress and like the movie “spoilers obviously”
spoiler
Moon
I saw all the same products just for 10 euros or so.
I ended up buying a dell docking station second hand for 50 euros that is doing what it promised to do and although might not be the best product but delivers enough power to my laptop.
USB-C hubs all seem to be dodgy crap made by anonymous Chinese companies and resold through various companies, including the likes of Apple. There's an absolute dearth of hubs made by actual reputable firms.
Did about a year of a docked laptop setup. Basically anything CableMatters is good. I used the 201331-BLK-J (DisplayPort Ultrawide) and the 201310-BLK-N (HDMI 2.1 OLED TV).
I would pass through my 100W charger and it worked fine. Audio would be sent over the video connection which meant no driver issues. I had speakers connected to the monitor.
The rest of the USB ports were miscellaneous and at least one cable going to the monitor to use its USB ports.
Tl;dr: Mac driver has issues with an often used cheap and buggy realtek network chip.
Can confirm, such combined hubs have almost always a weak/cheap part that makes the whole thing useless on failing. That's why i now go with a single-job-per-component principle. Ethernet to USB-C adapter and HDMI to USB-C adapter on a hub for example.
Tell that to the brand new, pretty expensive laptop I recently got from work which has a whopping 1 USB-C port that also doubles as the charging port. In no way can I get a multifunctional adapter to charge and output DisplayPort or HDMI at the same time. I'm starting to dislike USB and the clusterfuck of incompatible or optional protocols it can carry.
As someone who enjoys a bit of practicality into everything...? I was tempted to buy one of those little tidbits for a "futureproof" feel onto everything I plugged the little bastards in.
Until I met the... kvm switch. It may not allow me to plug a billion different things into it... but damn. It really works.
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I have 3 KVM switches, neither works with my CTRL keyboard neither with my gaming mouse. Sigh.
I'm thinking of building my own "dumb usb switch" as I have to plug, unplug all the time...
I bought a $200 USBC hub. It worked for a few months and then suddenly would do something to my laptop so that it would stop accepting a charge until the battery died completely and I restarted it.
Still works for my Steam Deck but largely a giant waste of money.
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