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1214 Review
53 Karma

Review on Club 3D Portable Thunderbolt Charging by Mario Schultz

Revainrating 5 out of 5

Simple and functional for what I need. Worked out of the box.

After 35 years in the semiconductor industry I have changed my technical tasks at home to be practical, intuitive and simple, but everything has to work continuously, why else? I recently bought an M1 Macbook Air. No, I haven't given up my computer, but I need it for work. In short, this connector simply plugs into the Mac, delivers power so no additional power is required, and instantly offers 3 Thunderbolt 4 ports along with USB Type-A. It's not for everyone, but for me it's all that I need. I have an ultrawide 49" 5144 x 1440 laptop that uses a USB-C connection but also works as a KVM. In short, it was everything I needed to integrate my new laptop into my home setup with minimal fuss, well, no fuss at all. All devices just work at the push of a button with either my PC or my Mac. There were two reasons for this, and not a direct cable from my laptop: First, I live in the US lightning capital, Florida, I wanted to disconnect my power supply to this hub and the connections from my other electronics. Second, I wanted my external NVME drive, which gets very hot, to also be a layer away from my laptop (call me paranoid). For those who want audio out, ethernet, other hardware, etc., this probably isn't it Right for you to daisy chain multiple dongles (many other options for T4 but yes expensive) It was reasonably priced although I suspect the limited ports will bring the price down in the near future. I have a Thunderbolt 3 portable enclosure with a 2TB NVME drive, although I didn't test the speed of the drive, I was able to copy a 5GB file to my portable drive in less than 4 seconds through this hub. Not really concerned although I will update if my experience changes. It gets warm but not hot. So far there are no complaints. Corresponds exactly to my expectations. ------UPDATE ------- I did some basic disk labeling with my 1TB NVMe Thunderbolt 3 external drive that "doesn't have the best performance in the world". picture attached. When connected directly to the MacBook Air M1, the results matched exactly. Totally satisfied with the purchase, works exactly as it should. For those with older monitors or a mixed/matched set of devices, this may not be for you if the "key dilemma" doesn't bother you. For me, it's all built into my monitor. Very happy for the price, small, simple, intuitive (literally no settings other than plugging in a cable. Keeps the laptop fully charged for a full day. Also, to avoid confusion, the M1 Mac only has one monitor used for my setup which makes this product effective. I would be happy if this unit had DisplayLink functionality but it doesn't. If you're looking for dual monitors which I don't have with the T4, today you need at least a MacBook Air hub with DisplayLink functionality too At this price I would absolutely love to have DisplayLink.For me it doesn't deduct a single star as it works exactly as I expected when I bought it.Ultra wide monitor is a lot of my workbench space, a second monitor just needs new bifocals :))

Pros
  • New
Cons
  • Very Expensive