So many trolls in the comments smh. Great video, dude. Yours is the only one I've found that has run those tests on the dock and also show how it's like hooking up. That's a proper review. Thumbs up!
I absolutely love this video. Real world usage. Excellent detail. This is the kind of unboxing review I would like to see on all kinds of different products. Definitely a new subscriber here.
Within the first 1:36 of the video, the first thing I noticed is that even though it's a Thunderbolt 3 box, it lacks the power button that the Lenovo, Dell, and StarTech docks seem to provide, that isn't just a switch for the box, it would also power on the connected system as well.
Very true, not something that affects me though since I can't think of a time that I've ever docked a laptop and not had the laptop open as well - I can never have too much screen space! 😛 I've also just checked and if the machine is in sleep mode, when you dock it you can wake it up by pressing any keyboard key so the only time a power button on the dock would really be required would be to power it on from scratch.
Great review, covers the all-important speed tests which other reviews don't (got burned on a 480 Mbps "gigabit" ethernet dongle...). I'm going to have to spring for one of these more expensive docks soon as I recently got a 4K display... Right now I'm using a £130 "Archiss AS-DCS01" dock which has served me well - it does what I need (85W charging, real gigabit ethernet, audio out with volume control and a handful of USB 3 ports). But the HDMI port on it only does 4K@30Hz so I've had to get a separate adapter for my 4K@60Hz display and now I'm plugging in 2 cables. When I chose this one the only other contender with 85W charging was the Belkin one so now this one is also on my radar (but over here it's almost £400... ouch). I have my dock hidden under the table and have USB and headphone extension leads going up to the front-side edge of the desk to easy access. Makes everything look super-tidy. I don't need SD card reading though so that might not be an option for you.
Thanks! If you don't need the SD card reader, you may also want to look at the TS3 (non Plus) - Doesn't have the SD card reader and has a few less USB ports (but has eSATA instead) however it's way cheaper, the refurb is only £139
@@camerongray1515 Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately it looks like they don't market the non-plus version here in Japan :( edit: someone is selling a gray-import on amazon for more than the Plus model costs [LOL]
This and your follow up tear down video are the best videos out there for this device. I've watched nearly all of them and they come across as glorified adverts but you've gone above and beyond. Will happily subscribe to you.
I was already confident in my purchase. Then, I saw your teardown video, and this one. Now I feel like I’ve made some kind of sleeper success/buy it for life acquisition. You make great videos, man. Thanks.
Timing of your video is incredible. My company is to upgrade me to the new mbp and I was dreading the research. My home setup is already well established with the old mbp, and I was mostly concerned about replacement of the old 3.5mm S/PDIF with some usb sound card. This hub is perfect for me because it already has optical-out. Thank you!
I wanted this when it came out, but eventually I got Lenovo Thunderbolt 3 dock instead because Lenovo one I brought from eBay just for A$300. Also work perfectly with 15 inch MacBook Pro. Although Lenovo one only provides 65w for the laptop, still enough because I turned TurboBoost off. Only issue is I have to boot into windows just for firmware update.
I have the same one and I am very happy with that. On the back I have connected 3 external hard drive USB, and an external monitor. I have 2 questions for you: - if I want to disconnect the computer while I am working what is the procedure to safely disconnect the whole dock? Do I have to eject all the external hd manually? - once I turn the computer off, the dock stays on as it is powered. In this context, also the external hd stay on. How can I turn it off? Only unplugging the power? Cheers
My Caldigit TS3 Plus only is recognized by my Dell XPS 15 7590 when the dock is plugged into the laptop when shut down, and then powered up. If my laptop is on and I plug the dock in, nothing happens. Any ideas? All drivers up to date...
Great video!! It convinced me to buy the TS3 Plus. Have it a few days and I’m very glad I bought it (so far). Very convenient, not to plug in 2 separate usb-c dongles and a T5 SSD in my 2018 13” touchbar MBP each time I use the laptop with duals displays @ home. I only have a problem with the audio in on the front, and connecting it to my IK iRig handheld mic. It doesn’t record any sound (I did connect the good source). I suspect it’s got something to do with the jack on the microphone. It has a normal (male) jack, put also a female input (to monitor the microphone sound with a headphone). I don’t use the monitor function, but I would like the microphone to work (record sound). Do you have any idea if the mic/audio in on the Caldigit is mono or stereo ? Maybe I’ll have to buy an adapter plug that transforms my sound+monitor microphone male plug, in a mono male plug. Any idea’s? Thanks again for the good work. I subscribed for more ;-)
I own one of these, and I'll have to admit that they are pretty decent now. However, I got one at launch day,because I preorderd it. The software is quite stable now, however the dock can be rather picky about displays. I'm using 2 27" HP Envy 4k monitors, and I had to go trough a couple of cables before it all went well.
Very useful review, thanks! I have a question about the audio input. Is it stereo? Have you tried recording sound from an external device through it? I need to record DJ sets on my MBP so the quality of the audio input is important to me.
I have since bought new monitors a couple of years later but at the time it simply wasn't worth spending £500+ on a pair of new monitors when an £80 adapter would do the job, especially after having just bought the docking station.
Hey dude, great video. Just one question, I'm in the market for a dock like this but I'm worried that it'll ruin my laptop battery being plugged in all day everday. Is it fine to have it plugged in all the time?
I have an upgraded Macbook Pro 2012 with 16gb of Ram & an SSD with an External GPU. Could I use this product to connect my older mac to both the Egpu and an external monitor? I already have a thunderbolt 2 to thunderbolt 3 thingo along with a thunderbolt 3 to thunderbolt 3 cable.
Cameron, have you considered an inexpensive SPDIF to analog converter for your front audio issue? 15 quid or so is all they cost. Just a thought, mate.
Was thinking about that although since the adapter would also be the DAC, I would need to be careful to not get something that sounds rubbish, had this before with cheap USB soundcard dongles. I could do with better speakers so will probably get some powered monitors that can take USB and/or SPDIF.
Club 3d stuff is like semi pro stuff , they have to work and not break so its worth it. Compare that to some of the Kramer gear and its cheap :). Nice dock. I had a nice belkin thunderbolt 2 dock when i had a retina in work ( on PC now thank god) that had audio on the back and the front ! Also have the same monitor, dont use it anymore tho on a 40inch 4k.
It's the ZSH shell using ohmyzsh with the "agnoster" theme and powerline fonts. It does all sorts of fancy stuff such as showing what branch you are on if you are in a git repo.
The power shouldn't be a problem as it should auto negotiate but I'd double check with Caldigit to be sure. The only issue I'd see is whether the video output will work as this is geared towards how Macs output video over thunderbolt which is different from PCs which tend to use DisplayPort MST. It's likely that if it did work, you'd only be able to use a single display.
Hi, I used to connect my external hard drive to TV directly via USB to watch my photos and videos, now my files got big and TV processors can’t handle, any recommendation to use to connect to TV via USB or HDMI?.
So if a thunderbolt monitor or other accessories support laptop charging, how is that handled when you connect one of those to that thunderbolt passthrough port on TS3 Plus ? Does it negotiate no charge ?
I honestly don't know although I presume it must do. This dock is explicitly compatible with the LG 5K displays so it must be able to deal with its power delivery functionality.
PC users should worry about the BIOS version in their laptop and PC's ability to handle the 90W that this dock puts onto Thunderbolt 3. Apple Mac compatibility seems to be really good, but PC compatibility - in practice - is a concern. From both ends of the TB3 cable. I lost a 2,000 currency laptop on it, I guess (with the highest degree of confidence). After considerable time with this dock and, later, one from the PC vendor brand, I am not as convinced anymore as I was in the beginning of the TB3 journey. The 15" 4K i7 OLED laptop needs more than the 90W the dock can deliver when fully open and operational, but with the lid closed, all wireless switched off, etc., and battery already fully charged, I assumed I would only need the TB3 cable. No, I needed the laptop power supply as well. Goodbye to the idea of "one TB3 cable" and easy leave/come back home, connect/disconnect. Then 4K video suffered from all sorts of driver issues that took HW/SW vendors (MS?Intel/Nvidia) a year to solve and in the meantime a direct laptop-display over HDMI was needed, adding the third cable. Not the docks's fault in any way. Then the Ethernet connector on the dock passed away. A dance between 1, 2, swapping of connections between 2 docks ensued. And somewhere in the process the video out became inoperable on the other dock. In another parallel universe, Adobe kept improving Lightroom and Photoshop, a.o. with improved GPU hardware acceleration (CUDA type processing). And at some point, the discrete GPU with its own 4GB video-RAM in the laptop (so it has two GPU, one integrated in the Intel CPU, one discrete) and 16GB RAM no longer "cut it". This became so annoying, I decided to rebuild my workstation that had died on a BIOS upgrade. Replaced the motherboard and CPU (Z490 + 10700K) and reused the rest. With out-of-the-box TB3, the TB3 devices are all connected to the "40 Gbps" links, two 4K displays for content creation (Eizo - large color space, no dynamic contrast artifacts). Things go "so fast" I get surprised frequently when inspecting how far a task is, that actually I had not noticed it already had finished. The laptop? E-mail, admin work, tethered shooting in studio and outdoors, and culling and cropping during travel - the remaining edit work is done on the workstation. With all RAID 1 redundancy for OS, Apps, and important data, automatic backup replication, automatic offsite replication of backups, the workstation has no competition. 32 GB of 2,666MHz RAM and an "old" GTX 1080 Ti with 11 GB video RAM go blazingly fast - all without overclocking, default settings, straight out of the box. Or, do I still need these docks now? With working from home due to lockdown, they are an excellent basis for a work-workplace for the significant other and to create a laptop touchdown point.
I can't understand why CalDigit discontinued the TS3 Lite. Almost all the same connectivity as this but £100 cheaper. I wish manufacturers would also recognise there is a market for people with desktop/iMac setups who want all the connectivity at the rear. Include a 10GbE port with that and the Apple fans will be queuing out the door.
im so confused by these. Is it just extra inputs and stuff? or does it like do more... sure thunderbolt port on the front is fast but if I have my laptop connected to the thunderbolt port whats the point? I dont understand the point of getting one of these besides a regular dock at all.
The benefit is that this connects to the machine over Thunderbolt 3 whereas cheaper docks tend to connect over USB-C. Not only does this let you connect thunderbolt devices to the dock, it also means that peripherals in the dock itself (namely the ethernet controller) are better PCIe based devices rather than USB ones.
How Reliable is it? We have Lenovo Thunderbolt-3 docks at work and they are horrible in terms of reliability. It happens very often that a Laptop just won't recognize the dock and you have to unplug it and plug it back in again. Sometimes only restarting the computer helps.
I haven't had any major issues so far, there's been a couple of times where one of my monitors hasn't come on until I disconnect and reconnect power to the DP->DVI adaptor but I feel that that's almost certainly an adaptor issue and not a dock one - It detects the USB devices and Ethernet controller.etc every time.
I was looking at one of these docks when they first came out, but haven't had a TB/USB-C laptop until - well, I actually still don't, but will have one soon. This will be top of my list. What's going on in your .bashrc / .bash_profile?
I'm using ZSH as my shell with Ohmyzsh using the agnoster theme and powerline fonts. My .zshrc then runs neofetch on launch for a bit of pointless eyecandy.
Yeah, I've been surprised by how little I actually need to plug things in when I'm not at my desk. Any time I've needed to connect something, the cheap "Letscom" USB-C dongle I've been using has done the job and I'd be able to get away without it most of the time if I were to replace my "x to USB A" cables with "x to USB C" ones. Of course I'd always prefer it if I had more ports however I can see what Apple is doing, the only way that the industry will move towards everything being USB-C/Thunderbolt is if Apple does something ridiculous like getting rid of all "legacy" ports, otherwise manufacturers aren't going to move.
@@camerongray1515 Exactly. Apple is usually on the right side of history with these things (like the first iMac dropping the floppy drive and standardising on USB, and dropping the optical drive with the first MacBook Air). Given that USB C is a standard that PCs, phones, games consoles, peripherals etc. are adopting widely, and that other high-end/premium PCs are adopting Thunderbolt over USB C for high-throughput devices.... I think Apple made the right bet :-)
In what way? It doesn't affect normal use. If you tried to run a game spanning across both of them you'd probably get a pretty bad frame rate but for general productivity it won't cause any issues.
@@joshhamester Shouldn't make any difference unless you are live rendering graphics on multiple monitors simultaneously like a game. Something like rendering video or photos won't be affected by multiple monitors. Running 3 displays is trivial for a modern computer.
They are Hazro HZ27WBs, pretty decent 2560x1440 IPS monitors. They aren't particularly special, pretty much on par with the Dell Ultrasharps/Apple Cinema Displays from the same time period (2013ish) however it would still be much more expensive to replace them instead of spending £80 on the adaptor. Since they are a matched pair, I wouldn't have been able to live with myself if I had just replaced one of them so I'd be looking at the cost of replacing both if I were to move to something newer.
Really good product when it works but a few words of warning that have put me off CalDigit for good: 1. The USB ports struggle to support webcams including my Logi Brio 4k, working intermittently or not at all. CalDigit supplied new USB drivers but these didn't fix the problem. 2. The TS3 Plus is an expensive brick if it fails out of warranty with CalDigit not offering any customer support or repair service. Given importance of right to repair and sustainability, nevermind the fact that this product costs £300!!!, this is totally inexcusable and the main reason I won't be purchasing another CalDigit product again. As an aside I've also had an expensive 2m CalDigit cable also fail on me.
Sadly, it's missing a compact flash slot, and CFast slot for those memory cards used in professional level cameras. So they are forever doomed to use mickeymouse card readers with flakey cables and terrible transfer speeds.
2018 = Slim laptop that has a non removable battery and barely any USB ports that needs an additional Hub with ports on to offer expandability which should be standard, 2014 = Dell M6800, Every port you need plus many extra ports just in case, no need for a USB Hub, runs cool even with 180W TDP..... logic
I value portability so a machine the size of that Dell would be completely out of the question for me. I definitely have issues with a lot of Apple's hardware decisions however I use it purely for the OS. Also, this is a docking station, something commonly used even when laptops have a large number of ports themselves, it's a convenience thing rather than having to plug in tonnes of different cables.
Cameron Gray I agree that the Dell M series Mobile workstations are on the extreme side of things, and that this Thunderbolt 3 Dock has a definite use in real-world applications, I'm just mind boggled by the decision to have less ports on a 13 or 15 inch laptop in 2018 than a 10.1 inch netbook had in 2012, slimmer and sleeker form factor is great but there's no point if you then need a dongle to make it usable, it's like they've been totally consumed by profit and forgot why customers buy there products.....it's got a function, if it can do what it was intended to there's not much point in having it, again it's silly decisions manufacturers make that really just make absolutely no sense
Absolutely, definitely pretty annoying that none of the Thunderbolt docks for Mac have more than a single displayport. Would be nice to have a pair of monitors AND a daisychained thunderbolt device! As far as I'm aware, MacOS doesn't support displayport MST so this probably explains it, I've seen other people reporting that they are unable to get docks designed for PCs to support multiple displays on Mac.
The issue with adding HDMI is that the MacBook Pro can only drive two displays over a single thunderbolt cable therefore it wouldn't be able to operate at the same time as the DisplayPort and ThunderBolt 3 monitor connections the dock already has. DisplayPort is easy to convert to HDMI and going in that direction is generally easier than if it had HDMI and I needed to convert it to DisplayPort. As for the USB A ports, it doesn't really bother me, most of my peripherals are USB A and it's likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future. In situations where I need USB-C it's always something simple like my phone or a flash drive which I can easily plug into the front USB-C or into the laptop itself. In fact, for my setup I've already populated all of the rear USB ports so any fewer would force me to add a hub.
It's certainly not cheap although the pricing is relatively competitive against other docking stations. Docks from the likes of Dell, Lenovo and HP (both Thunderbolt and ones that use a docking connector on the base of the machine) are all generally around the £200 mark for the higher end models.
I don't understand why someone who appears to be an intelligent and tech informed person would go and purchase such a terrible piece of hardware with everything floating on the web about their issues and unreliable tenancies you still purchased a crap book pro, those who buy them are usually uninformed sheeple so i cant for the life of me what made you make such a poor choice.
I have used all major platforms full time for extended periods of time and simply find that I can work more productively under MacOS as a general desktop OS. I have no brand loyalty to a specific platform and certainly have complaints about a lot of Apple's design decisions however for me it's purely down to the OS. You'd be surprised by the sheer number of professionals in the tech industry who use Macs as their preferred desktop platform, it's no longer the "easy to use platform for novice users" that they used to market it as. While I'm not denying there are problems, I also feel as though a lot of the issues are blown out of the water, yes there is a larger number of issues reported online about Macs than about say a specific model of random HP/Acer/whatever, however since there are so many more Macs in use when compared to a specific model of PC then it's only natural that there are going to be more reported issues. Reporting on issues with Apple products tend to also gain a lot more traction, this doesn't mean that issues are isolated to them, I've had a nightmare with the reliability of the motherboards in some of Dell's high end Latitudes (which are priced fairly close to the MacBook Pro) including one laptop which had to have its motherboard replaced 3 times because Dell kept fitting faulty parts. However, for mainstream tech reporting, a fault with a MacBook Pro is going to get far more interest than one about Dell Latitudes.
Top class trolling, MrLatte! My Mac Pro is approaching 10 years old and still going strong, and I’ve never had a Mac laptop last less than 6. However every Dell, HP and Toshiba I’ve had through my employer has barely made it to 3 before needing to be replaced. My current Toshiba arrived faulty, and took 4, yes FOUR replacements to get a working unit. So yeah, Apple are terrible, obviously....
So many trolls in the comments smh. Great video, dude. Yours is the only one I've found that has run those tests on the dock and also show how it's like hooking up. That's a proper review. Thumbs up!
I absolutely love this video. Real world usage. Excellent detail. This is the kind of unboxing review I would like to see on all kinds of different products. Definitely a new subscriber here.
Within the first 1:36 of the video, the first thing I noticed is that even though it's a Thunderbolt 3 box, it lacks the power button that the Lenovo, Dell, and StarTech docks seem to provide, that isn't just a switch for the box, it would also power on the connected system as well.
Very true, not something that affects me though since I can't think of a time that I've ever docked a laptop and not had the laptop open as well - I can never have too much screen space! 😛 I've also just checked and if the machine is in sleep mode, when you dock it you can wake it up by pressing any keyboard key so the only time a power button on the dock would really be required would be to power it on from scratch.
Great review, covers the all-important speed tests which other reviews don't (got burned on a 480 Mbps "gigabit" ethernet dongle...).
I'm going to have to spring for one of these more expensive docks soon as I recently got a 4K display... Right now I'm using a £130 "Archiss AS-DCS01" dock which has served me well - it does what I need (85W charging, real gigabit ethernet, audio out with volume control and a handful of USB 3 ports). But the HDMI port on it only does 4K@30Hz so I've had to get a separate adapter for my 4K@60Hz display and now I'm plugging in 2 cables. When I chose this one the only other contender with 85W charging was the Belkin one so now this one is also on my radar (but over here it's almost £400... ouch).
I have my dock hidden under the table and have USB and headphone extension leads going up to the front-side edge of the desk to easy access. Makes everything look super-tidy. I don't need SD card reading though so that might not be an option for you.
Thanks! If you don't need the SD card reader, you may also want to look at the TS3 (non Plus) - Doesn't have the SD card reader and has a few less USB ports (but has eSATA instead) however it's way cheaper, the refurb is only £139
@@camerongray1515 Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately it looks like they don't market the non-plus version here in Japan :(
edit: someone is selling a gray-import on amazon for more than the Plus model costs [LOL]
I literally just ordered one of these, it arrived Friday and I set it up yesterday. So far, it’s absolute brilliant. Highly recommended.
This and your follow up tear down video are the best videos out there for this device. I've watched nearly all of them and they come across as glorified adverts but you've gone above and beyond. Will happily subscribe to you.
I was already confident in my purchase. Then, I saw your teardown video, and this one. Now I feel like I’ve made some kind of sleeper success/buy it for life acquisition. You make great videos, man. Thanks.
Timing of your video is incredible. My company is to upgrade me to the new mbp and I was dreading the research. My home setup is already well established with the old mbp, and I was mostly concerned about replacement of the old 3.5mm S/PDIF with some usb sound card. This hub is perfect for me because it already has optical-out. Thank you!
I wanted this when it came out, but eventually I got Lenovo Thunderbolt 3 dock instead because Lenovo one I brought from eBay just for A$300. Also work perfectly with 15 inch MacBook Pro. Although Lenovo one only provides 65w for the laptop, still enough because I turned TurboBoost off. Only issue is I have to boot into windows just for firmware update.
I have the same one and I am very happy with that. On the back I have connected 3 external hard drive USB, and an external monitor.
I have 2 questions for you:
- if I want to disconnect the computer while I am working what is the procedure to safely disconnect the whole dock? Do I have to eject all the external hd manually?
- once I turn the computer off, the dock stays on as it is powered. In this context, also the external hd stay on. How can I turn it off? Only unplugging the power?
Cheers
My Caldigit TS3 Plus only is recognized by my Dell XPS 15 7590 when the dock is plugged into the laptop when shut down, and then powered up. If my laptop is on and I plug the dock in, nothing happens. Any ideas? All drivers up to date...
Great video!! It convinced me to buy the TS3 Plus. Have it a few days and I’m very glad I bought it (so far). Very convenient, not to plug in 2 separate usb-c dongles and a T5 SSD in my 2018 13” touchbar MBP each time I use the laptop with duals displays @ home.
I only have a problem with the audio in on the front, and connecting it to my IK iRig handheld mic. It doesn’t record any sound (I did connect the good source).
I suspect it’s got something to do with the jack on the microphone. It has a normal (male) jack, put also a female input (to monitor the microphone sound with a headphone). I don’t use the monitor function, but I would like the microphone to work (record sound). Do you have any idea if the mic/audio in on the Caldigit is mono or stereo ?
Maybe I’ll have to buy an adapter plug that transforms my sound+monitor microphone male plug, in a mono male plug. Any idea’s?
Thanks again for the good work. I subscribed for more ;-)
I own one of these, and I'll have to admit that they are pretty decent now.
However, I got one at launch day,because I preorderd it.
The software is quite stable now, however the dock can be rather picky about displays.
I'm using 2 27" HP Envy 4k monitors, and I had to go trough a couple of cables before it all went well.
Xantios Krugor what cables did you use?
Very useful review, thanks! I have a question about the audio input. Is it stereo? Have you tried recording sound from an external device through it? I need to record DJ sets on my MBP so the quality of the audio input is important to me.
Great video! Just wondering, why not have a new monitor? If you need to go through all these adapters just to make it work?
I have since bought new monitors a couple of years later but at the time it simply wasn't worth spending £500+ on a pair of new monitors when an £80 adapter would do the job, especially after having just bought the docking station.
@@camerongray1515 Yeah, i can understand that!
Hey dude, great video. Just one question, I'm in the market for a dock like this but I'm worried that it'll ruin my laptop battery being plugged in all day everday. Is it fine to have it plugged in all the time?
I have an upgraded Macbook Pro 2012 with 16gb of Ram & an SSD with an External GPU. Could I use this product to connect my older mac to both the Egpu and an external monitor? I already have a thunderbolt 2 to thunderbolt 3 thingo along with a thunderbolt 3 to thunderbolt 3 cable.
Cameron, have you considered an inexpensive SPDIF to analog converter for your front audio issue? 15 quid or so is all they cost. Just a thought, mate.
Was thinking about that although since the adapter would also be the DAC, I would need to be careful to not get something that sounds rubbish, had this before with cheap USB soundcard dongles. I could do with better speakers so will probably get some powered monitors that can take USB and/or SPDIF.
Club 3d stuff is like semi pro stuff , they have to work and not break so its worth it. Compare that to some of the Kramer gear and its cheap :).
Nice dock. I had a nice belkin thunderbolt 2 dock when i had a retina in work ( on PC now thank god) that had audio on the back and the front !
Also have the same monitor, dont use it anymore tho on a 40inch 4k.
Another great review! Random question what character are you using for your prompt in the terminal ?
It's the ZSH shell using ohmyzsh with the "agnoster" theme and powerline fonts. It does all sorts of fancy stuff such as showing what branch you are on if you are in a git repo.
Would this devise work with an ASRock Thunderbolt 3 A1G Card (PCIE)? I am worried about the powered side of the TB3 connecter into the card.
The power shouldn't be a problem as it should auto negotiate but I'd double check with Caldigit to be sure. The only issue I'd see is whether the video output will work as this is geared towards how Macs output video over thunderbolt which is different from PCs which tend to use DisplayPort MST. It's likely that if it did work, you'd only be able to use a single display.
@@camerongray1515 Thanks.... I will check with Caldigit
Hi, I used to connect my external hard drive to TV directly via USB to watch my photos and videos, now my files got big and TV processors can’t handle, any recommendation to use to connect to TV via USB or HDMI?.
So if a thunderbolt monitor or other accessories support laptop charging, how is that handled when you connect one of those to that thunderbolt passthrough port on TS3 Plus ? Does it negotiate no charge ?
I honestly don't know although I presume it must do. This dock is explicitly compatible with the LG 5K displays so it must be able to deal with its power delivery functionality.
PC users should worry about the BIOS version in their laptop and PC's ability to handle the 90W that this dock puts onto Thunderbolt 3. Apple Mac compatibility seems to be really good, but PC compatibility - in practice - is a concern. From both ends of the TB3 cable.
I lost a 2,000 currency laptop on it, I guess (with the highest degree of confidence).
After considerable time with this dock and, later, one from the PC vendor brand, I am not as convinced anymore as I was in the beginning of the TB3 journey.
The 15" 4K i7 OLED laptop needs more than the 90W the dock can deliver when fully open and operational, but with the lid closed, all wireless switched off, etc., and battery already fully charged, I assumed I would only need the TB3 cable. No, I needed the laptop power supply as well. Goodbye to the idea of "one TB3 cable" and easy leave/come back home, connect/disconnect.
Then 4K video suffered from all sorts of driver issues that took HW/SW vendors (MS?Intel/Nvidia) a year to solve and in the meantime a direct laptop-display over HDMI was needed, adding the third cable. Not the docks's fault in any way.
Then the Ethernet connector on the dock passed away. A dance between 1, 2, swapping of connections between 2 docks ensued. And somewhere in the process the video out became inoperable on the other dock.
In another parallel universe, Adobe kept improving Lightroom and Photoshop, a.o. with improved GPU hardware acceleration (CUDA type processing). And at some point, the discrete GPU with its own 4GB video-RAM in the laptop (so it has two GPU, one integrated in the Intel CPU, one discrete) and 16GB RAM no longer "cut it".
This became so annoying, I decided to rebuild my workstation that had died on a BIOS upgrade. Replaced the motherboard and CPU (Z490 + 10700K) and reused the rest. With out-of-the-box TB3, the TB3 devices are all connected to the "40 Gbps" links, two 4K displays for content creation (Eizo - large color space, no dynamic contrast artifacts). Things go "so fast" I get surprised frequently when inspecting how far a task is, that actually I had not noticed it already had finished. The laptop? E-mail, admin work, tethered shooting in studio and outdoors, and culling and cropping during travel - the remaining edit work is done on the workstation. With all RAID 1 redundancy for OS, Apps, and important data, automatic backup replication, automatic offsite replication of backups, the workstation has no competition. 32 GB of 2,666MHz RAM and an "old" GTX 1080 Ti with 11 GB video RAM go blazingly fast - all without overclocking, default settings, straight out of the box.
Or, do I still need these docks now? With working from home due to lockdown, they are an excellent basis for a work-workplace for the significant other and to create a laptop touchdown point.
I can't understand why CalDigit discontinued the TS3 Lite. Almost all the same connectivity as this but £100 cheaper. I wish manufacturers would also recognise there is a market for people with desktop/iMac setups who want all the connectivity at the rear. Include a 10GbE port with that and the Apple fans will be queuing out the door.
All the connectivity at the rear, which can be great for people who just hide the box behind their monitors or under their desks.
im so confused by these. Is it just extra inputs and stuff? or does it like do more... sure thunderbolt port on the front is fast but if I have my laptop connected to the thunderbolt port whats the point? I dont understand the point of getting one of these besides a regular dock at all.
The benefit is that this connects to the machine over Thunderbolt 3 whereas cheaper docks tend to connect over USB-C. Not only does this let you connect thunderbolt devices to the dock, it also means that peripherals in the dock itself (namely the ethernet controller) are better PCIe based devices rather than USB ones.
How Reliable is it? We have Lenovo Thunderbolt-3 docks at work and they are horrible in terms of reliability. It happens very often that a Laptop just won't recognize the dock and you have to unplug it and plug it back in again. Sometimes only restarting the computer helps.
I haven't had any major issues so far, there's been a couple of times where one of my monitors hasn't come on until I disconnect and reconnect power to the DP->DVI adaptor but I feel that that's almost certainly an adaptor issue and not a dock one - It detects the USB devices and Ethernet controller.etc every time.
@@camerongray1515 hi I have a hp 360 spectra I have 2x thunderbolt 3 and 1 usb1 will it work?
Next question I have a standard hdmi will ot work
Here's where I wish my laptop had USB type C thunderbolt! Brilliant video, really interesting!
can the diplay port socket run 144hz on a 144hz monitor??
Just purchased from the apple store, today. The reviews are mazing on this dock are amazing.
I was looking at one of these docks when they first came out, but haven't had a TB/USB-C laptop until - well, I actually still don't, but will have one soon. This will be top of my list.
What's going on in your .bashrc / .bash_profile?
I'm using ZSH as my shell with Ohmyzsh using the agnoster theme and powerline fonts. My .zshrc then runs neofetch on launch for a bit of pointless eyecandy.
Neat. The Apple/BSD logos look awesome! I print out some similar stats and a current local weather snapshot from wttr.in. Highly recommended :)
I do recommend an outboard DAC. I bought an iFi on eBay and the sound is so much better.
How to connect with dual PC which is based on Window 10 ?
The portageddon panic in the comments in funny. The situation is really not that bad :-)
Yeah, I've been surprised by how little I actually need to plug things in when I'm not at my desk. Any time I've needed to connect something, the cheap "Letscom" USB-C dongle I've been using has done the job and I'd be able to get away without it most of the time if I were to replace my "x to USB A" cables with "x to USB C" ones. Of course I'd always prefer it if I had more ports however I can see what Apple is doing, the only way that the industry will move towards everything being USB-C/Thunderbolt is if Apple does something ridiculous like getting rid of all "legacy" ports, otherwise manufacturers aren't going to move.
@@camerongray1515 Exactly. Apple is usually on the right side of history with these things (like the first iMac dropping the floppy drive and standardising on USB, and dropping the optical drive with the first MacBook Air).
Given that USB C is a standard that PCs, phones, games consoles, peripherals etc. are adopting widely, and that other high-end/premium PCs are adopting Thunderbolt over USB C for high-throughput devices.... I think Apple made the right bet :-)
Thanks so much for letting us know about the refurb store! Just saved £40
does having multi-monitors take a big toll on your graphics card?
In what way? It doesn't affect normal use. If you tried to run a game spanning across both of them you'd probably get a pretty bad frame rate but for general productivity it won't cause any issues.
how about when you're working in adobe apps? @@camerongray1515
@@joshhamester Shouldn't make any difference unless you are live rendering graphics on multiple monitors simultaneously like a game. Something like rendering video or photos won't be affected by multiple monitors. Running 3 displays is trivial for a modern computer.
@@camerongray1515 Cool thank you for your response.
@@camerongray1515 thanks again for your responses and review; just got the dock and it's working wonders.
That is a lot to speed on a dvi adapter I hope they really are good monitors not ones that could be replaced for not much more than the adaptor 😂
They are Hazro HZ27WBs, pretty decent 2560x1440 IPS monitors. They aren't particularly special, pretty much on par with the Dell Ultrasharps/Apple Cinema Displays from the same time period (2013ish) however it would still be much more expensive to replace them instead of spending £80 on the adaptor. Since they are a matched pair, I wouldn't have been able to live with myself if I had just replaced one of them so I'd be looking at the cost of replacing both if I were to move to something newer.
what generates your terminal login banner?
It's called Neofetch (github.com/dylanaraps/neofetch) - I'm then running it from my .zshrc/.bashrc files.
thanks for this I will try it out
Cameron Gray the link is dead
late to the party but just ordered one of these. Thx for the vid.
Really good product when it works but a few words of warning that have put me off CalDigit for good: 1. The USB ports struggle to support webcams including my Logi Brio 4k, working intermittently or not at all. CalDigit supplied new USB drivers but these didn't fix the problem. 2. The TS3 Plus is an expensive brick if it fails out of warranty with CalDigit not offering any customer support or repair service. Given importance of right to repair and sustainability, nevermind the fact that this product costs £300!!!, this is totally inexcusable and the main reason I won't be purchasing another CalDigit product again. As an aside I've also had an expensive 2m CalDigit cable also fail on me.
Sadly, it's missing a compact flash slot, and CFast slot for those memory cards used in professional level cameras. So they are forever doomed to use mickeymouse card readers with flakey cables and terrible transfer speeds.
A SONY Soundbar and Subwoofer will work with the optical out on that dock.
2018 = Slim laptop that has a non removable battery and barely any USB ports that needs an additional Hub with ports on to offer expandability which should be standard, 2014 = Dell M6800, Every port you need plus many extra ports just in case, no need for a USB Hub, runs cool even with 180W TDP..... logic
I value portability so a machine the size of that Dell would be completely out of the question for me. I definitely have issues with a lot of Apple's hardware decisions however I use it purely for the OS. Also, this is a docking station, something commonly used even when laptops have a large number of ports themselves, it's a convenience thing rather than having to plug in tonnes of different cables.
Cameron Gray I agree that the Dell M series Mobile workstations are on the extreme side of things, and that this Thunderbolt 3 Dock has a definite use in real-world applications, I'm just mind boggled by the decision to have less ports on a 13 or 15 inch laptop in 2018 than a 10.1 inch netbook had in 2012, slimmer and sleeker form factor is great but there's no point if you then need a dongle to make it usable, it's like they've been totally consumed by profit and forgot why customers buy there products.....it's got a function, if it can do what it was intended to there's not much point in having it, again it's silly decisions manufacturers make that really just make absolutely no sense
Great video by the way :)
I hope my current MacBook Pro doesn't kick the bucket anytime soon, because I'm not ready to live the dongle life.
@@SteelSkin667 No Magsafe life too!
Get yourself a Dragonfly...
Nice vid. In for one. Brilliant idea!
That is really nice , really is a premium product for that price. To me it's just one additional full size DisplayPort away from perfection.
Absolutely, definitely pretty annoying that none of the Thunderbolt docks for Mac have more than a single displayport. Would be nice to have a pair of monitors AND a daisychained thunderbolt device! As far as I'm aware, MacOS doesn't support displayport MST so this probably explains it, I've seen other people reporting that they are unable to get docks designed for PCs to support multiple displays on Mac.
The Best Thunderbolt 3 Dock!!!
English is not my foreign language and sometimes Im having a hard time following you,
because you speak so insanely fast :(
TH-cam has a slow-down feature now
Good video, thanks 👍
Too many USB A ports, could have one hdmi port.
The issue with adding HDMI is that the MacBook Pro can only drive two displays over a single thunderbolt cable therefore it wouldn't be able to operate at the same time as the DisplayPort and ThunderBolt 3 monitor connections the dock already has. DisplayPort is easy to convert to HDMI and going in that direction is generally easier than if it had HDMI and I needed to convert it to DisplayPort. As for the USB A ports, it doesn't really bother me, most of my peripherals are USB A and it's likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future. In situations where I need USB-C it's always something simple like my phone or a flash drive which I can easily plug into the front USB-C or into the laptop itself. In fact, for my setup I've already populated all of the rear USB ports so any fewer would force me to add a hub.
Great video. Just slow down man.
Excellent video! Have a sub
So expensive you would think Apple made it :)
It's certainly not cheap although the pricing is relatively competitive against other docking stations. Docks from the likes of Dell, Lenovo and HP (both Thunderbolt and ones that use a docking connector on the base of the machine) are all generally around the £200 mark for the higher end models.
AI everything! Hahaha
>ultimate
>*Macbook*
(jk ofc)
Please don`t talk so fast! With your dialect quite many words become hard to understand.
I don't think you understand Apple's vision. It's all thunderbolt or nothing.
I don't understand why someone who appears to be an intelligent and tech informed person would go and purchase such a terrible piece of hardware with everything floating on the web about their issues and unreliable tenancies you still purchased a crap book pro, those who buy them are usually uninformed sheeple so i cant for the life of me what made you make such a poor choice.
I have used all major platforms full time for extended periods of time and simply find that I can work more productively under MacOS as a general desktop OS. I have no brand loyalty to a specific platform and certainly have complaints about a lot of Apple's design decisions however for me it's purely down to the OS. You'd be surprised by the sheer number of professionals in the tech industry who use Macs as their preferred desktop platform, it's no longer the "easy to use platform for novice users" that they used to market it as. While I'm not denying there are problems, I also feel as though a lot of the issues are blown out of the water, yes there is a larger number of issues reported online about Macs than about say a specific model of random HP/Acer/whatever, however since there are so many more Macs in use when compared to a specific model of PC then it's only natural that there are going to be more reported issues. Reporting on issues with Apple products tend to also gain a lot more traction, this doesn't mean that issues are isolated to them, I've had a nightmare with the reliability of the motherboards in some of Dell's high end Latitudes (which are priced fairly close to the MacBook Pro) including one laptop which had to have its motherboard replaced 3 times because Dell kept fitting faulty parts. However, for mainstream tech reporting, a fault with a MacBook Pro is going to get far more interest than one about Dell Latitudes.
Top class trolling, MrLatte!
My Mac Pro is approaching 10 years old and still going strong, and I’ve never had a Mac laptop last less than 6.
However every Dell, HP and Toshiba I’ve had through my employer has barely made it to 3 before needing to be replaced. My current Toshiba arrived faulty, and took 4, yes FOUR replacements to get a working unit.
So yeah, Apple are terrible, obviously....