Review on 💻 Dell USB-C to HDMI / DP Adapter with Power Pass-Through by Tyler Owens

Sierra 10.12.1 is factory installed. I had little faith in it based on previous experience and other reviews here Dell but I must say that this product works great without drivers and has a great form factor Below I describe the operation of each port without drivers and then after installing the DisplayLink drivers: * Gigabit Ethernet: Once connected, it will be in Network devices show up as "USB 10/100/1000 LAN". I tested throughput in both directions with iPerf and confirmed full gigabit performance. I turned it on during all tests to see if warming up resulted in a speed drop would, but throughput remained consistent at gigabit speeds.* USB3: Performance tested with a External SSD and comparison of throughput with a direct connection to a computer. All speeds and USB3 bandwidth are the same.* VGA: Working when connected, tested up to 1600x1200@60Hz.* HDMI: Working when connected, tested up to 1920x1080@60Hz. However, audio over HDMI did not work ( via the cable that I have separately confirmed has audio leaking out of). For now I had everything I wanted, but I decided to install the latest DisplayLink drivers from their website to see if that fixed the sound. Problem with HDMI (I read that audio is transmitted via the DisplayPort protocol). Installed version 3.0 beta 1 (December 1, 2016) and actually fixed the audio issue. I notice that the driver pack also comes with an uninstaller. I need a small adapter that I can carry in my small computer case and have quick access to those 4 specific ports that I encounter on a daily basis as I visit different rooms, different locations, and in secure or underground environments. Places where there is only wired Ethernet. This adapter fully meets all requirements. I didn't encounter any of the issues some other reviewers mentioned about join order being important. Note that installing DisplayLink drivers will also automatically update the firmware on the adapter itself if it is out of date. On mine I looked at the before and after system info and didn't see any difference, but for users with earlier firmware versions this may explain some of the observations that others have seen interacting with drivers. In summary, for this system, if you don't want to install drivers, you get all 4 ports working with communications and video. If you also need sound via HDMI, the driver fixes this. Pretty ironic that this Dell adapter works almost flawlessly with a freshly released Mac and can't even work on Dell PCs that have been around for a while. But I agree! ----- March 2019 Update ----- Still works and works great on 2018 15" MacBook Pro.