7 ms·

USB-C hubs and my slow descent into madness (2021)

199 points by pabs3 1y ago

rr808 1y ago
Not strictly related but I just bought a USB4 USB-C cable which is rated at 40 Gbps. I still can't really believe it. (I still remember saving to cassette tape)
- gleenn 1y ago
  Have you tried to benchmark it at all?
  - jeffbee 1y ago
    Do you doubt that they work? Your can demonstrate it to yourself pretty easily with 2 computers and iperf.
  - rr808 1y ago
    I just have the cable. I dont have a computer nor a device that can transfer that quickly. Wont be long though! Actually looked like those 6k monitors @60Hz will fill the pipe.
- cyral 1y ago
  I use one of these for two 4k monitors, sound, ethernet, mouse, webcam, AND charging. It's amazing having one cable to plug in when I work from my desk. Unfortunately requires one of those $400 docks though.
  - avisser 1y ago
    Work bought me a VisionTek hub. I wanted the 1 cable life - unfortunately, it only does monitors via DisplayLink, aka compressed & streamed to & from my desk. It's noticeably fuzzy. So now it's 2 cables: 1 from the hub, 1 from the monitor. Both USB-C. WTF guys? My Apple monitor from 2009 just worked with 1 cable (no power, but still).
ivape 1y ago
I just bought a monitor arm that has a USB dock at the base. The dock is actually just a USB extension cord that is enclosed by the base of the arm. Think of it like putting a $10 USB hub into a box and poking holes in it to stick wires through. Great teardown, makes you wonder what's truly inside these boxes. In other news, I do think desk makers should start incorporating the USB dock inside the top board of a desk. People go through a lot of money and bullshit to keep their setup clean, especially those who swap computers.
- nightfly 1y ago
  > In other news, I do think desk makers should start incorporating the USB dock inside the top board of a desk. People go through a lot of money and bullshit to keep their setup clean, especially those who swap computers Will be obsolete in 5 years every time
  - mlyle 1y ago
    The selection isn't great yet, but you can get a USB charger or USB hub desk grommet (or one that does both). Hopefully there will be a matching sized one (60mm) doing something useful, but if not you can just put a normal grommet cover in and do the stuff under the desk. I'm using these things a bunch.
  - wincy 1y ago
    Humanscale the docks on the monitor arms look integrated but they're actually a really slick attachment that goes around the base nice and snug, so it just looks like one piece. It can be replaced if you take off the monitor, I really liked that. Humanscale is also extremely expensive as far as monitor arms go.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- 7952 1y ago
  I guess if the devices were reliable enough they could be added to floor boxes. But ultimately putting docks in monitors seems the cleanest way.
betterhealth12 1y ago
recently went through the process of picking a new hub and it took hours to locate one actually appropriate to my use case. Helpfully enough, chatgpt/claude were both good at locating ones with specific needs (x USB-C ports, y USB-A, no HDMI, no SD card readers), would probably have taken a lot longer without.
- derektank 1y ago
  LLMs really are fantastic tools for shopping and product comparison. It's going to suck once the marketers manage to successfully do the equivalent of SEO on them
  - sa1 1y ago
    > the equivalent of SEO on them It’s called GEO and it’s becoming a thing.
    - CharlesW 1y ago
      FWIW, you may have better searching for "LLMO".
s-mon 1y ago
Back at one of my previous employers we had a long internal briefing about why our latest device did not have USB-C when other solutions on the market by then had. The connector is solid but my god have there been disasters because of USB-C. 1. Power distribution upto high wattage, not always with auto sensing, 2. Wites rated to different data transmission speeds. 3. USB standard data transfers and Thunderbolt over the same connector and wire but most accessories are not rated for Thunderbolt. Omg I love it and I hate it.
- whoknowsidont 1y ago
  >but my god have there been disasters because of USB-C. ....like?
x-complexity 1y ago
Previous discussion (520 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30911598 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30911598
- tomhow 1y ago
  Thanks! USB-C hubs and my slow descent into madness (2021) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30911598 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30911598 - April 2022 (513 comments)
ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
I think I remember this (or a similar one). The main gist was that almost every hub used the same board.
kbos87 1y ago
Can anyone tell me why I have several devices in my home that demand a certain USB-C cord in order to charge? They are mostly cheap Chinese devices that won’t acknowledge a more expensive (e.g., Apple) uSB-C cord plugged into them. Even when plugged into the same transformer. They only charge with the cheap USB-C cord they came with. What gives?
- jjice 1y ago
  I've always ignored instructions that say to only use that product's USB cord (things like my kitchen scale and water flossed) and have never had an issue. Sounds like I've just gotten lucky though, based on your experience. I was under the impression that the USB protocol just fell back to 1a 5v when power negotiation was unsure. What kinds of devices?
  - Gigachad 1y ago
    USB-C is 0v by default and you have to signal to get anything at all. A lot of junky devices are non compliant and aren’t set up to signal 5v so they get 0 when plugged in to a C-C cable.
    - orbital-decay 1y ago
      How does it negotiate with a host-powered device if it's unpowered to begin with?
      - mrheosuper 1y ago
        using passive component
      - ianburrell 1y ago
        With resistors on the CC pins. In particular, there is resistor value that indicates legacy USB charging. This is in the USB-A to USB-C adapters and cables. The manufacturers cheaped out in not including the right resistors.
whatever1 1y ago
The problem that I have is that I have a ton of usb cords in my drawer. I DONT KNOW WHAT THEY ARE CAPABLE OF. Is it a charge only cable (no data)? Is it usb3 5gbps ? Is it 100 watt power delivery? Is it thunderbolt 3/4/5?
- ethan_smith 1y ago
  Colored electrical tape or heat shrink labels at both ends of each cable with a simple coding system (P=Power delivery wattage, D=Data speed, T=Thunderbolt) solves this problem permanently.
  - ianburrell 1y ago
    The USB IF really should have specified some labeling for cables. The icons used on USB-A connectors are too complicated. What I think would work well is colored rings, with some for the different USB3 speeds, and some for the 100W and 240W charging.
    - whatever1 1y ago
      Really what we need as consumers are just 2 numbers: X GBps | Y Watts. I don’t need to know what freaking protocol it uses under the hood.
      - mrheosuper 1y ago
        And that is what they are trying to do. For example: Usb 5Gbps is the same regardless of usb 3.0, 3.1 or 3.2 gen 1. In fact, customers dont need to know that "3.0" number. they just need their ports support 5gbps
    - crote 1y ago
      They did! [0] The problem is that the vast majority of manufacturers have chosen to just completely ignore it. [0]: https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/usb_type-c_cable_logo_usage_guidelines_20240903.pdf https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/usb_type-c_cable_log...
Nursie 1y ago
I just bought my third dock/hub thing. I've been on a Macbook M1 Air for the last few years and wanted multiple screens, so I got a USB 3 hub (Dell D6000) which does DisplayLink. I had almost everything hooked in there, but still connected one screen direct via usb-c. Displaylink is good for an M1 as you can add loads of screens if you want, but you can't watch streaming services on them as MacOs thinks your screen is being 'watched'. I did want a thunderbolt hub but as far as I could tell at the time Thunderbolt and Displaylink just didn't come in the same package, so I was stuck with two cables. Three years on, I picked up an M4 machine that can do two external screens natively, great, I can reach my goal of only plugging one cable into my macbook. But the Dell can't do that on a Mac because of something or other meaning it would work as mirrored-only. Time to grab an actual thunderbolt dock. I picked up an HP TB3 refurb (HP P5Q58AA) which was cheap (30 AUD) and seemed great on paper, only to find it needed a type of power adaptor I didn't have that put me back another 60 bucks, and when I got it all hooked up it didn't always work and couldn't support decent refresh rates on my monitors, with one always being stuck at 30Hz. There was a software update available, but for that you need a windows machine with a TB3 port, not something I have. So then I grabbed a Kensington SD5750T, which was another 140 bucks, but I am pleased to report that it just works and supports dual 4k60 over thunderbolt/USB-C. There is no HDMI or Displayport on this thing, but my monitors both have USB-C in so... Unfortunately, now that I've read the article, I can also confirm it contains a Realtek 0x8153, and is an OEM'd 'goodway' dock. Just as well I'm happy with wireless networking!
userbinator 1y ago
However, I can’t help but feel a little bit cheated by companies just buying off-the-shelf products, slightly modifying the case layout, and then quadruple the price because it’s “from a reputable company”. LOL. Welcome to the world of OEM/ODM. As a conservative estimate I'd guess >95% of all consumer electronics is done this way. Even the big names like Apple, Dell, Lenovo, etc. do it. However, if you are - according to Wikipedia - a two-billion-dollar company like Realtek, then I expect you to get your shit together. There are exactly zero excuses for Realtek to not have a driver release ready almost a year after Big Sur has been announced. Zero. Mac users are in the minority. It's worth noting that the RTL8153 is a native RNDIS device, which has its history on the Windows side, and Realtek has only started contributing drivers to Linux relatively recently. FWIW I've had great luck with Realtek NICs, although I don't specifically recall using their USB NICs.
- 0manrho 1y ago
  > I've had great luck with Realtek NICs, although I don't specifically recall using their USB NICs. I envy you. Realtek NICs (especially over USB) are tantamount to trash in my mind after 2 decades of fighting their frequent failures. Be it failure to initialize at all to driver crashes to pisspoor feature sets (or claiming to have features that don't work at all), and a myriad of other problems. Granted, they usually work in Windows, but I don't work in windows (I live and work in linux/BSD). It has become my personally policy to avoid/disable and realtek NICs and replace them with something actually functional whenever possible. Hopefully their work on linux-side drivers will change this given their proliferation. To be honest I've yet to find a reliable USB based network interface regardless of chipset/brand/manufacturer, outside of the ones that do PCIe passthrough via USB4/Thunderbolt and those tend to be quite expensive (though they are starting to come down in price).
  - userbinator 1y ago
    I suspect a lot of the flakiness is not the chip itself but the fact that, because it's cheap, the bottom-of-the-barrel manufacturers will always use it instead of the significantly more expensive alternatives, and then further cut corners with the board layout and design. Ironically, the only problems I've had with NICs were on an Intel and a Broadcom.
internet2000 1y ago
Looks like he only bought cheaper things, so no wonder they all eventually died. My USB-C hub is an HP Thunderbolt dock. It's beefy as heck, lasted for years with no issues. It has a tiny fan inside, which I assume helps with the longevity. I hear good things about CalDigit docks too. Those also are very expensive.
- bigstrat2003 1y ago
  I agree that if you buy cheap devices you shouldn't expect them to last. But the first device was almost $100, which I certainly wouldn't call cheap.
- Gigachad 1y ago
  I’ve got a few of the Apple ones because every new job just gives you one, and they have always worked in every way in every device I’ve used them on. Yeah they cost more but they actually work properly.
  - daveidol 1y ago
    Apple ones? Like this? https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MW5M3AM/A/usb-c-digital-av-multiport-adapter https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MW5M3AM/A/usb-c-digital-a...
    - Gigachad 1y ago
      Yep that one. I guess they don’t have everything, but the everything hubs tend to come with a lot of confusing pitfalls. I use that one in particularly on my steam deck mostly.
- mrheosuper 1y ago
  $70 for a hub is not cheap at all.
- noisy_boy 1y ago
  Expensive doesn't equal great either. My ThinkPad thunderbolt hub, which is not cheap by any standards, can't route HDMI without randomly restarting itself every few minutes. Connecting the same cable directly to my ThinkPad laptop works perfectly fine. Sort of defeats the whole point of buying a hub. I have sort of given up on hopes of getting a high quality hub - it's a money sink
bigstrat2003 1y ago
Unfortunately I can't say I'm surprised that the common thread was Realtek network chips. I've found their NICs to be fairly flaky over the years - the majority work, but a solid minority don't. In contrast, Intel NICs have been bulletproof for me and I seek them out whenever I have any choice in the matter.
mdavidn 1y ago
Years ago, I bought a hub similar to that Satechi one. It worked great until I unplugged my laptop. Then my home network would die. After some sleuthing, I realized the RJ45 interface repeated any packets received, creating a network loop and confusing my Ethernet switch. I contacted Satechi about this obvious defect. Their support team insisted this was by design and told me to unplug USB-C power from the hub whenever I disconnected my laptop, which … kinda defeats the point?
- bot403 1y ago
  Wow me too. This was very confusing and annoying as my wife's cheap dock would take down the network while we were both working from home. It took several annoying incidents before we connected the incidents to the dock.
- erincandescent 1y ago
  Was it actually repeating packets or was it sending out pause frames? In my experience USB ethernet adapters send out pause frames which shit-tier switches replicate to all ports in direct contravention of the ethernet specifications.
acheron9383 1y ago
Man that is a lot of computer to put into that product for as little money as possible. I'm not intending to excuse the products with likely bad firmware causing most of these issues, especially Ethernet PHYs. Though, in my professional experience doing embedded device firmware, Ethernet PHYs are always the biggest pain, hands down. The firmware included with them has many many ways to configure it wrong, and the defaults are typically just random settings, not a reasonable configuration. Just getting the drivers even running sometimes involves just knowing a few tricks. Anyways, it doesn't surprise me many have trouble working right, especially when they indicate they are all running OEM firmware essentially.
geor9e 1y ago
USB-PD hubs are very annoying. Devices with no battery on a hub (Raspberry Pi etc) will just get hard rebooted if anything else gets plugged into the same hub. I looked at a lot of hubs and they all behaved this way. They all cut power to everything, then re-negotiate the power allowance each device gets from the shared wattage, every time anything new connects. I could not find a hub that honored existing power contracts and gave new devices the remainder. My guess is the average customer expect the newest plugged in device to get max power (at the expense of everything else) or they return it to the store thinking it's broken.
- sciencerobot 1y ago
  I’m not sure if it’s a USB-PD hub but Jeff Geerling posted a video about a USB-C charger that doesn’t suffer from the renegotiation issue https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dG2v4FHwJjE https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dG2v4FHwJjE
- k8sToGo 1y ago
  Not the case anymore with more modern chargers e.g. Anker GaN
  - mrheosuper 1y ago
    even the new anker zolo 140w suffer the same issue.
    - k4rli 1y ago
      Can confirm. Recently purchased ugreen nexode gan 100w has the same issue. https://www.amazon.de/-/en/gp/aw/d/B0CYT1VVMV https://www.amazon.de/-/en/gp/aw/d/B0CYT1VVMV Other than that it seems to work fine. Even though it's only 100W I haven't had to use the Dell 130W charger in a while.
- mystifyingpoi 1y ago
  Unfortunately there is no real solution to this, that would work in general case. With renegotiation, the power gets cut off, but most likely every device will get the allowance and all of them will still charge. With no renegotiation, a newly plugged in device might not charge at all. Not sure what's worse.
donatj 1y ago
I had my own decent into madness this spring. I slowly replaced my home network piece by piece trying to find the bottleneck that was causing my gigabit internet to top out at ~300kbps in my office on the other side of the house from the modem. After replacing the Ethernet cable run from the second floor to the basement with fiber optic... And the switches in between... And seeing no improvement... I tried a different computer with a built-in ethernet port on the same cable, and pulled 920kbps. The problem... Was my Caldigit Thunderbolt Dock. I replaced it with an OWC one from Facebook marketplace for cheap and it solved the problem... Roughly $500 in. I'm still angry I didn't check that early earlier. My network is 10 gigabit now though.
- billforsternz 1y ago
  I think you mean 300Mbps and 920Mbps (M not K right?)
  - donatj 1y ago
    Yes! lol I'd have just used WiFi if I was only getting 320kbps wired lol
- FroshKiller 1y ago
  Which CalDigit dock? I have the TS3 Plus. Using its Ethernet port and Thunderbolt 3 to my laptop, I'm getting the expected 1,000 Mbps connection on my home network. Do you have a different model or maybe a defective unit?
  - cguess 1y ago
    After going through the same pains as the author of the piece, I switched to CalDigit as well. No concerns or problems for me on a Mac for about a year. I had one that went bad, but I bought it off Ebay so I figured that might be more my fault (and it might not even be bad, I think I set it up wrong with the wrong Thunderbolt cable (too long for the power needed).
  - donatj 1y ago
    It's was very old, it was one of their first Thinderbolt 3 docks. I think I got it in like 2019
theoreticalmal 1y ago
I’m so glad to hear other people have had issues with these stupid cheap docks. I’ve burned through three of them over the last few years. It seems that not routing laptop charging power helps, but doesn’t solve the issue. Stupid cheap products.
LoganDark 1y ago
I'm convinced the only way to get a quality piece of hardware is to spend a couple hundred bucks on a Thunderbolt 4 or 5 hub. I got a TB4 hub from CalDigit and it works great. And no misbehaving network chip to be found either.
daft_pink 1y ago
I’ve also given up on USB hubs and I’m using a Thunderbolt 4 dock to get more IO out of my Mac Studio. It feels crazy to spend that much $’s, but it solved my problems.
- e40 1y ago
  Any recommendations?
cozzyd 1y ago
this is why it's important to have an RJ45 port on your laptop... (although.... looks like it's a realtek with the r8169 driver)
jonathanlydall 1y ago
More accurate to say it’s a dock than a hub, but I’m using a Dell 2427DEB monitor[0] with my Dell work notebook and a second monitor daisy chained from it on the DP out port. My work laptop has just a single USB-C cable plugged into the monitor for everything making it super trivial to plug it back in when I use it away from my desk (which I do regularly). My personal desktop has a single DP and also a USB A to B cable. The monitor has KVM capability so I can super conveniently switch between them even with the two screens. Cables are completely minimized with this set up, I’m very happy. The only thing that’s unfortunate is that I occasionally work on a MacBook Pro 16” M4 and it can’t drive the second monitor over the same USB-C cable as Apple CBA to have support for DP MST on even their premium priced hardware. So I have to also plug in an HDMI cable to the second monitor. Also unfortunate with the MacBook Pro is that macOS UI scaling doesn’t allow ratios like 125% meaning the UI elements aren’t quite at my preferred size. My Windows 11 handles this perfectly. [0] https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-pro-27-plus-video-conferencing-monitor-p2724deb/apd/210-bgmf/monitors-monitor-accessories https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-pro-27-plus-video-confe...
- yonatan8070 1y ago
  When I was tasked with acquiring desk setups for our whole company (small, new startup) back when everyone was using just whatever I decided to go with a really similar setup, Dell P2425HE monitor with integrated USB-C hub, and a Dell P2425H daisy chained from it. I'm really glad we went with that, so far they've been great (for software devs, no color sensitive stuff).
- lloeki 1y ago
  > macOS UI scaling doesn’t allow ratios like 125% meaning the UI elements aren’t quite at my preferred size Try BetterDisplay, and enable "Flexible Scaling" (a per-display setting). Bonus: enable "UI Scale Matching" and output will be same physical size across all displays (as long as they report proper DPI, but I think you can hack that as well right there)
  - jonathanlydall 1y ago
    Thanks, may give that a try.
dazzaji 1y ago
One of the things that I found most frustrating about USB-C hubs is how hard it is to find one that actually gives you multiple USB-C ports. I have several USB-C devices but most hubs just give you one USB-C port and a bunch of USB-A ports. At most it’s 2 USB-C ports but only with the hub that plugs into both USB-C ports on my MacBook Pro (so I’m never able to get more ports than I started with). The result is I end up having to keep swapping devices. For a connector that was supposed to be the "one universal port," it's weird that most hubs assume you only need one USB-C connection. Has anyone found a decent hub with multiple USB-C data outputs?
- isametry 1y ago
  I'm in the same boat. It seems like the mindset for consumer-grade hubs is to provide support for as many old, legacy devices as possible, rather than a higher number of new devices. Another problem is that USB-A ports are dirt cheap and simple to implement, so hub makers feel like "leaving free IO on the table" by not sprinkling them on everything. Whereas each "decent" USB-C port has enough complexity to think twice about adding it. Nevertheless, there are a couple of options. Try searching for "USB-C only hub". You will get some results, but they are basically the identical product (same IO card), just with different housings. So you can pretty much count with these specs: 1 USB-C in for power, 3–4 USB-C out, 5 or 10Gbps each, Power Delivery at various wattages. No video support. I have one of these on my desk right now, it's from the brand "Minisopuru", I get power and four USB-C "3.2 Gen 2" ports. It's fine. But like I said, it's no Thunderbolt, and no video support, so I have to "waste" the other port on my MacBook just for my external display. There are also Thunderbolt / USB4 devices which will give you a bonkers amount of IO, including good TB / USB-C ports usually (plus some USB-A of course, as a spit in the face – so you'd need to ignore those). But these are not hubs, they are docks, which is a different product class entirely (big and heavy, more expensive, dedicated power supply). Something I've been doing recently to salvage the USB-A ports I still begrudgingly encounter, while continuing to (force myself to) upgrade all my devices to type-C, are these: [0]. 1-to-1 USB-A male to USB-C female adapters. I just stick them in all USB-A ports I encounter, leave them there all the time, and move on with my life. It's a bit bulky and looks kinda stupid, but it basically gives me USB-C everywhere I need (including work-issued PCs and docking stations) for just a couple of bucks. For low-bandwidth devices like headphones, keyboard / mice / gamepads, or even my phone, it works perfectly fine. [0] – https://www.amazon.com/UGREEN-Adapter-10Gbps-Converter-Samsung/dp/B0CY1Y3TSQ https://www.amazon.com/UGREEN-Adapter-10Gbps-Converter-Samsu...
amelius 1y ago
What is the cheapest way of generating eye diagrams of USB cables? And the cheapest way to measure bit error rates?
- raron 1y ago
  For real eye diagram, a signal / PRBS generator and a high end oscilloscope. Those are in the many-tens-of-thousands of USD range. Debug tools for eg. FPGA transceivers or some redriver chips can measure BER and show fake eye diagrams. In the few-hundreds to the few-thousands of USD range, but you may need a company to sing NDAs. Eg.: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/docs/programmable/683819/22-1/eye-viewer.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/docs/programmable/68...
  - amelius 1y ago
    Thanks. If this type of equipment were more accessible and cheaper we'd see less USB problems. This should also be USB consortium's responsibility, but I guess this way they make more money with compliance testing.
    - raron 1y ago
      I'm not sure about that. These equipment would seen not so expensive if you are a manufacturer who makes tens of thousands of USB cables a day. But customers can not see the difference between good and bad USB cables, just their design and their price.
mschuster91 1y ago
I 'member hearing stories about an early USB C hub which contained a network chip that, when no computer was attached but it had power from the brick, would randomly barf invalid ARP packets, up to and including taking entire networks down. Anyone 'member details?
snickmy 1y ago
Slightly off topic. Would you see any case where Ethernet(POE*) are replaced with native USB-c?
richrichardsson 1y ago
> I guess if you need to plug in an ancient beamer or something? Slightly off-topic, but I wonder if "beamer" is a "real" German word or one they borrowed from English in a weird way. The first time I heard it completely threw me for a loop, as in the UK, "beamer" is shorthand for a BMW car.
- lxgr 1y ago
  > I wonder if "beamer" is a "real" German word or one they borrowed from English in a weird way. It’s both :) See also: “Handy” for mobile phone.
  - richrichardsson 1y ago
    I guess I meant if "beam" is an original German word, and then does "beamer" make sense grammatically in German. Of course given the history of English it's not unlikely that "beam" came from German roots and they have the same meaning.
gloosx 1y ago
Yes. I have exact same story: around 3 completely screwed hubs til I got to mostly decent working one. I hate Apple for the port shenanigans, they are so close sometimes by plugging something into one port, the other one gets blocked. I can even block one port by my headphones cable thats how close together they are. Truly an idiot designed this. Also USB-C really feels more flimsy than USB-A and cables I insert in are quite shaky already after 1 year of usage. Same goes with 3.5mm jack on the phones. Freaking adapters are just an ominous thing to use. They are just bad and they always break. The port is so loose so after 3 months of using they just start falling away from it. There is no decent phone left with a 3.5mm jack, which is a really sad state of things... Unless you know one? Feel free to suggest.
- lsaferite 1y ago
  Do you clean your USB-C ports? I used to get frustrated thinking the port was worn as cables would come out easily. I used a plastic dental pick to clean the port and it felt brand new afterward. Lint and fine debris gets in the port and then a cable insertion compacts that debris/lint. Over time this compaction layer builds up and cables no longer have enough depth to properly lock onto the port. It was shocking how much debris was compacted into the port.
- danpla 1y ago
  > There is no decent phone left with a 3.5mm jack, which is a really sad state of things... Unless you know one? Feel free to suggest. Sony Xperia phones traditionally have a 3.5 jack and a normal screen (without holes and other nonsense for the camera).
tguvot 1y ago
somewhat relevant: usb-c cable analyzer, in case you not sure what your cable is capable of https://caberqu.com/home/39-ble-caberqu-0611816327412.html https://caberqu.com/home/39-ble-caberqu-0611816327412.html
onewheeltom 1y ago
I buy used open box Belkin usb-c hubs (F4U092) from eBay. Work great on my MacBook Air
m463 1y ago
I just wish there were some good USB power strips. Not hubs, not for data but for charging, something like a regular AC power strip. I understand that power requirements will be large. They will start appearing, but this seems like a no-brainer to me.

199 points by pabs3 1y ago

Not strictly related but I just bought a USB4 USB-C cable which is rated at 40 Gbps. I still can't really believe it. (I still remember saving to cassette tape)

gleenn 1y ago
Have you tried to benchmark it at all?
- jeffbee 1y ago
  Do you doubt that they work? Your can demonstrate it to yourself pretty easily with 2 computers and iperf.
- rr808 1y ago
  I just have the cable. I dont have a computer nor a device that can transfer that quickly. Wont be long though! Actually looked like those 6k monitors @60Hz will fill the pipe.
cyral 1y ago
I use one of these for two 4k monitors, sound, ethernet, mouse, webcam, AND charging. It's amazing having one cable to plug in when I work from my desk. Unfortunately requires one of those $400 docks though.
- avisser 1y ago
  Work bought me a VisionTek hub. I wanted the 1 cable life - unfortunately, it only does monitors via DisplayLink, aka compressed & streamed to & from my desk. It's noticeably fuzzy. So now it's 2 cables: 1 from the hub, 1 from the monitor. Both USB-C. WTF guys? My Apple monitor from 2009 just worked with 1 cable (no power, but still).

ivape 1y ago

I just bought a monitor arm that has a USB dock at the base. The dock is actually just a USB extension cord that is enclosed by the base of the arm. Think of it like putting a $10 USB hub into a box and poking holes in it to stick wires through. Great teardown, makes you wonder what's truly inside these boxes. In other news, I do think desk makers should start incorporating the USB dock inside the top board of a desk. People go through a lot of money and bullshit to keep their setup clean, especially those who swap computers.

nightfly 1y ago
> In other news, I do think desk makers should start incorporating the USB dock inside the top board of a desk. People go through a lot of money and bullshit to keep their setup clean, especially those who swap computers Will be obsolete in 5 years every time
- mlyle 1y ago
  The selection isn't great yet, but you can get a USB charger or USB hub desk grommet (or one that does both). Hopefully there will be a matching sized one (60mm) doing something useful, but if not you can just put a normal grommet cover in and do the stuff under the desk. I'm using these things a bunch.
- wincy 1y ago
  Humanscale the docks on the monitor arms look integrated but they're actually a really slick attachment that goes around the base nice and snug, so it just looks like one piece. It can be replaced if you take off the monitor, I really liked that. Humanscale is also extremely expensive as far as monitor arms go.
deleted 1y ago
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7952 1y ago
I guess if the devices were reliable enough they could be added to floor boxes. But ultimately putting docks in monitors seems the cleanest way.

betterhealth12 1y ago

recently went through the process of picking a new hub and it took hours to locate one actually appropriate to my use case. Helpfully enough, chatgpt/claude were both good at locating ones with specific needs (x USB-C ports, y USB-A, no HDMI, no SD card readers), would probably have taken a lot longer without.

derektank 1y ago
LLMs really are fantastic tools for shopping and product comparison. It's going to suck once the marketers manage to successfully do the equivalent of SEO on them
- sa1 1y ago
  > the equivalent of SEO on them It’s called GEO and it’s becoming a thing.
  - CharlesW 1y ago
    FWIW, you may have better searching for "LLMO".

s-mon 1y ago

Back at one of my previous employers we had a long internal briefing about why our latest device did not have USB-C when other solutions on the market by then had. The connector is solid but my god have there been disasters because of USB-C. 1. Power distribution upto high wattage, not always with auto sensing, 2. Wites rated to different data transmission speeds. 3. USB standard data transfers and Thunderbolt over the same connector and wire but most accessories are not rated for Thunderbolt. Omg I love it and I hate it.

whoknowsidont 1y ago
>but my god have there been disasters because of USB-C. ....like?

x-complexity 1y ago

Previous discussion (520 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30911598 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30911598

tomhow 1y ago
Thanks! USB-C hubs and my slow descent into madness (2021) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30911598 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30911598 - April 2022 (513 comments)

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago

I think I remember this (or a similar one). The main gist was that almost every hub used the same board.

kbos87 1y ago

Can anyone tell me why I have several devices in my home that demand a certain USB-C cord in order to charge? They are mostly cheap Chinese devices that won’t acknowledge a more expensive (e.g., Apple) uSB-C cord plugged into them. Even when plugged into the same transformer. They only charge with the cheap USB-C cord they came with. What gives?

jjice 1y ago
I've always ignored instructions that say to only use that product's USB cord (things like my kitchen scale and water flossed) and have never had an issue. Sounds like I've just gotten lucky though, based on your experience. I was under the impression that the USB protocol just fell back to 1a 5v when power negotiation was unsure. What kinds of devices?
- Gigachad 1y ago
  USB-C is 0v by default and you have to signal to get anything at all. A lot of junky devices are non compliant and aren’t set up to signal 5v so they get 0 when plugged in to a C-C cable.
  - orbital-decay 1y ago
    How does it negotiate with a host-powered device if it's unpowered to begin with?
    - mrheosuper 1y ago
      using passive component
    - ianburrell 1y ago
      With resistors on the CC pins. In particular, there is resistor value that indicates legacy USB charging. This is in the USB-A to USB-C adapters and cables. The manufacturers cheaped out in not including the right resistors.

whatever1 1y ago

The problem that I have is that I have a ton of usb cords in my drawer. I DONT KNOW WHAT THEY ARE CAPABLE OF. Is it a charge only cable (no data)? Is it usb3 5gbps ? Is it 100 watt power delivery? Is it thunderbolt 3/4/5?

ethan_smith 1y ago
Colored electrical tape or heat shrink labels at both ends of each cable with a simple coding system (P=Power delivery wattage, D=Data speed, T=Thunderbolt) solves this problem permanently.
- ianburrell 1y ago
  The USB IF really should have specified some labeling for cables. The icons used on USB-A connectors are too complicated. What I think would work well is colored rings, with some for the different USB3 speeds, and some for the 100W and 240W charging.
  - whatever1 1y ago
    Really what we need as consumers are just 2 numbers: X GBps | Y Watts. I don’t need to know what freaking protocol it uses under the hood.
    - mrheosuper 1y ago
      And that is what they are trying to do. For example: Usb 5Gbps is the same regardless of usb 3.0, 3.1 or 3.2 gen 1. In fact, customers dont need to know that "3.0" number. they just need their ports support 5gbps
  - crote 1y ago
    They did! [0] The problem is that the vast majority of manufacturers have chosen to just completely ignore it. [0]: https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/usb_type-c_cable_logo_usage_guidelines_20240903.pdf https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/usb_type-c_cable_log...

Nursie 1y ago

I just bought my third dock/hub thing. I've been on a Macbook M1 Air for the last few years and wanted multiple screens, so I got a USB 3 hub (Dell D6000) which does DisplayLink. I had almost everything hooked in there, but still connected one screen direct via usb-c. Displaylink is good for an M1 as you can add loads of screens if you want, but you can't watch streaming services on them as MacOs thinks your screen is being 'watched'. I did want a thunderbolt hub but as far as I could tell at the time Thunderbolt and Displaylink just didn't come in the same package, so I was stuck with two cables. Three years on, I picked up an M4 machine that can do two external screens natively, great, I can reach my goal of only plugging one cable into my macbook. But the Dell can't do that on a Mac because of something or other meaning it would work as mirrored-only. Time to grab an actual thunderbolt dock. I picked up an HP TB3 refurb (HP P5Q58AA) which was cheap (30 AUD) and seemed great on paper, only to find it needed a type of power adaptor I didn't have that put me back another 60 bucks, and when I got it all hooked up it didn't always work and couldn't support decent refresh rates on my monitors, with one always being stuck at 30Hz. There was a software update available, but for that you need a windows machine with a TB3 port, not something I have. So then I grabbed a Kensington SD5750T, which was another 140 bucks, but I am pleased to report that it just works and supports dual 4k60 over thunderbolt/USB-C. There is no HDMI or Displayport on this thing, but my monitors both have USB-C in so... Unfortunately, now that I've read the article, I can also confirm it contains a Realtek 0x8153, and is an OEM'd 'goodway' dock. Just as well I'm happy with wireless networking!

userbinator 1y ago

However, I can’t help but feel a little bit cheated by companies just buying off-the-shelf products, slightly modifying the case layout, and then quadruple the price because it’s “from a reputable company”. LOL. Welcome to the world of OEM/ODM. As a conservative estimate I'd guess >95% of all consumer electronics is done this way. Even the big names like Apple, Dell, Lenovo, etc. do it. However, if you are - according to Wikipedia - a two-billion-dollar company like Realtek, then I expect you to get your shit together. There are exactly zero excuses for Realtek to not have a driver release ready almost a year after Big Sur has been announced. Zero. Mac users are in the minority. It's worth noting that the RTL8153 is a native RNDIS device, which has its history on the Windows side, and Realtek has only started contributing drivers to Linux relatively recently. FWIW I've had great luck with Realtek NICs, although I don't specifically recall using their USB NICs.

0manrho 1y ago
> I've had great luck with Realtek NICs, although I don't specifically recall using their USB NICs. I envy you. Realtek NICs (especially over USB) are tantamount to trash in my mind after 2 decades of fighting their frequent failures. Be it failure to initialize at all to driver crashes to pisspoor feature sets (or claiming to have features that don't work at all), and a myriad of other problems. Granted, they usually work in Windows, but I don't work in windows (I live and work in linux/BSD). It has become my personally policy to avoid/disable and realtek NICs and replace them with something actually functional whenever possible. Hopefully their work on linux-side drivers will change this given their proliferation. To be honest I've yet to find a reliable USB based network interface regardless of chipset/brand/manufacturer, outside of the ones that do PCIe passthrough via USB4/Thunderbolt and those tend to be quite expensive (though they are starting to come down in price).
- userbinator 1y ago
  I suspect a lot of the flakiness is not the chip itself but the fact that, because it's cheap, the bottom-of-the-barrel manufacturers will always use it instead of the significantly more expensive alternatives, and then further cut corners with the board layout and design. Ironically, the only problems I've had with NICs were on an Intel and a Broadcom.

internet2000 1y ago

Looks like he only bought cheaper things, so no wonder they all eventually died. My USB-C hub is an HP Thunderbolt dock. It's beefy as heck, lasted for years with no issues. It has a tiny fan inside, which I assume helps with the longevity. I hear good things about CalDigit docks too. Those also are very expensive.

bigstrat2003 1y ago
I agree that if you buy cheap devices you shouldn't expect them to last. But the first device was almost $100, which I certainly wouldn't call cheap.
Gigachad 1y ago
I’ve got a few of the Apple ones because every new job just gives you one, and they have always worked in every way in every device I’ve used them on. Yeah they cost more but they actually work properly.
- daveidol 1y ago
  Apple ones? Like this? https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MW5M3AM/A/usb-c-digital-av-multiport-adapter https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MW5M3AM/A/usb-c-digital-a...
  - Gigachad 1y ago
    Yep that one. I guess they don’t have everything, but the everything hubs tend to come with a lot of confusing pitfalls. I use that one in particularly on my steam deck mostly.
mrheosuper 1y ago
$70 for a hub is not cheap at all.
noisy_boy 1y ago
Expensive doesn't equal great either. My ThinkPad thunderbolt hub, which is not cheap by any standards, can't route HDMI without randomly restarting itself every few minutes. Connecting the same cable directly to my ThinkPad laptop works perfectly fine. Sort of defeats the whole point of buying a hub. I have sort of given up on hopes of getting a high quality hub - it's a money sink

bigstrat2003 1y ago

Unfortunately I can't say I'm surprised that the common thread was Realtek network chips. I've found their NICs to be fairly flaky over the years - the majority work, but a solid minority don't. In contrast, Intel NICs have been bulletproof for me and I seek them out whenever I have any choice in the matter.

mdavidn 1y ago

Years ago, I bought a hub similar to that Satechi one. It worked great until I unplugged my laptop. Then my home network would die. After some sleuthing, I realized the RJ45 interface repeated any packets received, creating a network loop and confusing my Ethernet switch. I contacted Satechi about this obvious defect. Their support team insisted this was by design and told me to unplug USB-C power from the hub whenever I disconnected my laptop, which … kinda defeats the point?

bot403 1y ago
Wow me too. This was very confusing and annoying as my wife's cheap dock would take down the network while we were both working from home. It took several annoying incidents before we connected the incidents to the dock.
erincandescent 1y ago
Was it actually repeating packets or was it sending out pause frames? In my experience USB ethernet adapters send out pause frames which shit-tier switches replicate to all ports in direct contravention of the ethernet specifications.

acheron9383 1y ago

Man that is a lot of computer to put into that product for as little money as possible. I'm not intending to excuse the products with likely bad firmware causing most of these issues, especially Ethernet PHYs. Though, in my professional experience doing embedded device firmware, Ethernet PHYs are always the biggest pain, hands down. The firmware included with them has many many ways to configure it wrong, and the defaults are typically just random settings, not a reasonable configuration. Just getting the drivers even running sometimes involves just knowing a few tricks. Anyways, it doesn't surprise me many have trouble working right, especially when they indicate they are all running OEM firmware essentially.

geor9e 1y ago

USB-PD hubs are very annoying. Devices with no battery on a hub (Raspberry Pi etc) will just get hard rebooted if anything else gets plugged into the same hub. I looked at a lot of hubs and they all behaved this way. They all cut power to everything, then re-negotiate the power allowance each device gets from the shared wattage, every time anything new connects. I could not find a hub that honored existing power contracts and gave new devices the remainder. My guess is the average customer expect the newest plugged in device to get max power (at the expense of everything else) or they return it to the store thinking it's broken.

sciencerobot 1y ago
I’m not sure if it’s a USB-PD hub but Jeff Geerling posted a video about a USB-C charger that doesn’t suffer from the renegotiation issue https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dG2v4FHwJjE https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dG2v4FHwJjE
k8sToGo 1y ago
Not the case anymore with more modern chargers e.g. Anker GaN
- mrheosuper 1y ago
  even the new anker zolo 140w suffer the same issue.
  - k4rli 1y ago
    Can confirm. Recently purchased ugreen nexode gan 100w has the same issue. https://www.amazon.de/-/en/gp/aw/d/B0CYT1VVMV https://www.amazon.de/-/en/gp/aw/d/B0CYT1VVMV Other than that it seems to work fine. Even though it's only 100W I haven't had to use the Dell 130W charger in a while.
mystifyingpoi 1y ago
Unfortunately there is no real solution to this, that would work in general case. With renegotiation, the power gets cut off, but most likely every device will get the allowance and all of them will still charge. With no renegotiation, a newly plugged in device might not charge at all. Not sure what's worse.

donatj 1y ago

I had my own decent into madness this spring. I slowly replaced my home network piece by piece trying to find the bottleneck that was causing my gigabit internet to top out at ~300kbps in my office on the other side of the house from the modem. After replacing the Ethernet cable run from the second floor to the basement with fiber optic... And the switches in between... And seeing no improvement... I tried a different computer with a built-in ethernet port on the same cable, and pulled 920kbps. The problem... Was my Caldigit Thunderbolt Dock. I replaced it with an OWC one from Facebook marketplace for cheap and it solved the problem... Roughly $500 in. I'm still angry I didn't check that early earlier. My network is 10 gigabit now though.

billforsternz 1y ago
I think you mean 300Mbps and 920Mbps (M not K right?)
- donatj 1y ago
  Yes! lol I'd have just used WiFi if I was only getting 320kbps wired lol
FroshKiller 1y ago
Which CalDigit dock? I have the TS3 Plus. Using its Ethernet port and Thunderbolt 3 to my laptop, I'm getting the expected 1,000 Mbps connection on my home network. Do you have a different model or maybe a defective unit?
- cguess 1y ago
  After going through the same pains as the author of the piece, I switched to CalDigit as well. No concerns or problems for me on a Mac for about a year. I had one that went bad, but I bought it off Ebay so I figured that might be more my fault (and it might not even be bad, I think I set it up wrong with the wrong Thunderbolt cable (too long for the power needed).
- donatj 1y ago
  It's was very old, it was one of their first Thinderbolt 3 docks. I think I got it in like 2019

theoreticalmal 1y ago

I’m so glad to hear other people have had issues with these stupid cheap docks. I’ve burned through three of them over the last few years. It seems that not routing laptop charging power helps, but doesn’t solve the issue. Stupid cheap products.

LoganDark 1y ago

I'm convinced the only way to get a quality piece of hardware is to spend a couple hundred bucks on a Thunderbolt 4 or 5 hub. I got a TB4 hub from CalDigit and it works great. And no misbehaving network chip to be found either.

daft_pink 1y ago

I’ve also given up on USB hubs and I’m using a Thunderbolt 4 dock to get more IO out of my Mac Studio. It feels crazy to spend that much $’s, but it solved my problems.

e40 1y ago
Any recommendations?

cozzyd 1y ago

this is why it's important to have an RJ45 port on your laptop... (although.... looks like it's a realtek with the r8169 driver)

jonathanlydall 1y ago

More accurate to say it’s a dock than a hub, but I’m using a Dell 2427DEB monitor[0] with my Dell work notebook and a second monitor daisy chained from it on the DP out port. My work laptop has just a single USB-C cable plugged into the monitor for everything making it super trivial to plug it back in when I use it away from my desk (which I do regularly). My personal desktop has a single DP and also a USB A to B cable. The monitor has KVM capability so I can super conveniently switch between them even with the two screens. Cables are completely minimized with this set up, I’m very happy. The only thing that’s unfortunate is that I occasionally work on a MacBook Pro 16” M4 and it can’t drive the second monitor over the same USB-C cable as Apple CBA to have support for DP MST on even their premium priced hardware. So I have to also plug in an HDMI cable to the second monitor. Also unfortunate with the MacBook Pro is that macOS UI scaling doesn’t allow ratios like 125% meaning the UI elements aren’t quite at my preferred size. My Windows 11 handles this perfectly. [0] https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-pro-27-plus-video-conferencing-monitor-p2724deb/apd/210-bgmf/monitors-monitor-accessories https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-pro-27-plus-video-confe...

yonatan8070 1y ago
When I was tasked with acquiring desk setups for our whole company (small, new startup) back when everyone was using just whatever I decided to go with a really similar setup, Dell P2425HE monitor with integrated USB-C hub, and a Dell P2425H daisy chained from it. I'm really glad we went with that, so far they've been great (for software devs, no color sensitive stuff).
lloeki 1y ago
> macOS UI scaling doesn’t allow ratios like 125% meaning the UI elements aren’t quite at my preferred size Try BetterDisplay, and enable "Flexible Scaling" (a per-display setting). Bonus: enable "UI Scale Matching" and output will be same physical size across all displays (as long as they report proper DPI, but I think you can hack that as well right there)
- jonathanlydall 1y ago
  Thanks, may give that a try.

dazzaji 1y ago

One of the things that I found most frustrating about USB-C hubs is how hard it is to find one that actually gives you multiple USB-C ports. I have several USB-C devices but most hubs just give you one USB-C port and a bunch of USB-A ports. At most it’s 2 USB-C ports but only with the hub that plugs into both USB-C ports on my MacBook Pro (so I’m never able to get more ports than I started with). The result is I end up having to keep swapping devices. For a connector that was supposed to be the "one universal port," it's weird that most hubs assume you only need one USB-C connection. Has anyone found a decent hub with multiple USB-C data outputs?

isametry 1y ago
I'm in the same boat. It seems like the mindset for consumer-grade hubs is to provide support for as many old, legacy devices as possible, rather than a higher number of new devices. Another problem is that USB-A ports are dirt cheap and simple to implement, so hub makers feel like "leaving free IO on the table" by not sprinkling them on everything. Whereas each "decent" USB-C port has enough complexity to think twice about adding it. Nevertheless, there are a couple of options. Try searching for "USB-C only hub". You will get some results, but they are basically the identical product (same IO card), just with different housings. So you can pretty much count with these specs: 1 USB-C in for power, 3–4 USB-C out, 5 or 10Gbps each, Power Delivery at various wattages. No video support. I have one of these on my desk right now, it's from the brand "Minisopuru", I get power and four USB-C "3.2 Gen 2" ports. It's fine. But like I said, it's no Thunderbolt, and no video support, so I have to "waste" the other port on my MacBook just for my external display. There are also Thunderbolt / USB4 devices which will give you a bonkers amount of IO, including good TB / USB-C ports usually (plus some USB-A of course, as a spit in the face – so you'd need to ignore those). But these are not hubs, they are docks, which is a different product class entirely (big and heavy, more expensive, dedicated power supply). Something I've been doing recently to salvage the USB-A ports I still begrudgingly encounter, while continuing to (force myself to) upgrade all my devices to type-C, are these: [0]. 1-to-1 USB-A male to USB-C female adapters. I just stick them in all USB-A ports I encounter, leave them there all the time, and move on with my life. It's a bit bulky and looks kinda stupid, but it basically gives me USB-C everywhere I need (including work-issued PCs and docking stations) for just a couple of bucks. For low-bandwidth devices like headphones, keyboard / mice / gamepads, or even my phone, it works perfectly fine. [0] – https://www.amazon.com/UGREEN-Adapter-10Gbps-Converter-Samsung/dp/B0CY1Y3TSQ https://www.amazon.com/UGREEN-Adapter-10Gbps-Converter-Samsu...

amelius 1y ago

What is the cheapest way of generating eye diagrams of USB cables? And the cheapest way to measure bit error rates?

raron 1y ago
For real eye diagram, a signal / PRBS generator and a high end oscilloscope. Those are in the many-tens-of-thousands of USD range. Debug tools for eg. FPGA transceivers or some redriver chips can measure BER and show fake eye diagrams. In the few-hundreds to the few-thousands of USD range, but you may need a company to sing NDAs. Eg.: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/docs/programmable/683819/22-1/eye-viewer.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/docs/programmable/68...
- amelius 1y ago
  Thanks. If this type of equipment were more accessible and cheaper we'd see less USB problems. This should also be USB consortium's responsibility, but I guess this way they make more money with compliance testing.
  - raron 1y ago
    I'm not sure about that. These equipment would seen not so expensive if you are a manufacturer who makes tens of thousands of USB cables a day. But customers can not see the difference between good and bad USB cables, just their design and their price.

mschuster91 1y ago

I 'member hearing stories about an early USB C hub which contained a network chip that, when no computer was attached but it had power from the brick, would randomly barf invalid ARP packets, up to and including taking entire networks down. Anyone 'member details?

snickmy 1y ago

Slightly off topic. Would you see any case where Ethernet(POE*) are replaced with native USB-c?

richrichardsson 1y ago

> I guess if you need to plug in an ancient beamer or something? Slightly off-topic, but I wonder if "beamer" is a "real" German word or one they borrowed from English in a weird way. The first time I heard it completely threw me for a loop, as in the UK, "beamer" is shorthand for a BMW car.

lxgr 1y ago
> I wonder if "beamer" is a "real" German word or one they borrowed from English in a weird way. It’s both :) See also: “Handy” for mobile phone.
- richrichardsson 1y ago
  I guess I meant if "beam" is an original German word, and then does "beamer" make sense grammatically in German. Of course given the history of English it's not unlikely that "beam" came from German roots and they have the same meaning.

gloosx 1y ago

Yes. I have exact same story: around 3 completely screwed hubs til I got to mostly decent working one. I hate Apple for the port shenanigans, they are so close sometimes by plugging something into one port, the other one gets blocked. I can even block one port by my headphones cable thats how close together they are. Truly an idiot designed this. Also USB-C really feels more flimsy than USB-A and cables I insert in are quite shaky already after 1 year of usage. Same goes with 3.5mm jack on the phones. Freaking adapters are just an ominous thing to use. They are just bad and they always break. The port is so loose so after 3 months of using they just start falling away from it. There is no decent phone left with a 3.5mm jack, which is a really sad state of things... Unless you know one? Feel free to suggest.

lsaferite 1y ago
Do you clean your USB-C ports? I used to get frustrated thinking the port was worn as cables would come out easily. I used a plastic dental pick to clean the port and it felt brand new afterward. Lint and fine debris gets in the port and then a cable insertion compacts that debris/lint. Over time this compaction layer builds up and cables no longer have enough depth to properly lock onto the port. It was shocking how much debris was compacted into the port.
danpla 1y ago
> There is no decent phone left with a 3.5mm jack, which is a really sad state of things... Unless you know one? Feel free to suggest. Sony Xperia phones traditionally have a 3.5 jack and a normal screen (without holes and other nonsense for the camera).

tguvot 1y ago

somewhat relevant: usb-c cable analyzer, in case you not sure what your cable is capable of https://caberqu.com/home/39-ble-caberqu-0611816327412.html https://caberqu.com/home/39-ble-caberqu-0611816327412.html

onewheeltom 1y ago

I buy used open box Belkin usb-c hubs (F4U092) from eBay. Work great on my MacBook Air

m463 1y ago

I just wish there were some good USB power strips. Not hubs, not for data but for charging, something like a regular AC power strip. I understand that power requirements will be large. They will start appearing, but this seems like a no-brainer to me.