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?
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.
You can get them now. Thunderbolt and USB 4 hubs will often have multiple USB C ports and only need one plug. I have one that's more of a docking station:
> 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.
It's the power consumption.
IIRC, USB-C has a base power per port of 15W (5V @ 3A) with just basic CC resistors. USB 2 starts at 0.5W (5V @ 0.1A) and is only supposed to allow 2.5W (5V @ 0.5A) after negotiation. USB 3 is 4.5W (5V @ .900A).
Note that the Caldigit hub linked in a sibling has a power supply of 20V @ 9A. That's 180W!
Yes, I've bought a chinese ("Acasis" brand) TB4 hub which has three TB4 downstream ports and an USB 3.x hub with three downstream 10 Gbps USB-C ports. There are also weird combos like one downstream TB3 + three downstream USB-C 3.x. Still not great, but it's better than a single downstream port.
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?
Because the USB Consortium made a terrible mistake. Instead of speccing USB-PD power supplies to default to 5V <3A when there are no resistors in the port of the other device, the default is do nothing. So in order to be in spec, you have to refuse to charge non-compliant ports. This means the compliant power supplies are worse, in a way. So you need to use a "dumb" USB-A power supply and USB-A to C cable, which does default to 5V <3A to matter what. As for why some devices choose to use non-compliant ports - I assume it's extreme cheapness. They save a penny on a resistor.
At this point I'm even surprised that compliant cables and chargers exist so the GP can have that problem.
But I believe the specs are that way to avoid problems with OTG devices. If both devices decide to just push a voltage into the cable at the same time, you risk spending a great deal of energy or even start a fire. That said, there are better ways to deal with this issue; those are just slightly more expensive.
No need to have a separate USB-A brick - simply have a USB-C brick plus C-to-A adapter. An adapter will force 5V down the port no matter what. But afaik you still need USB-A cable (or another adapter?), which kinda defeats the whole idea of having just one cable.
I guess this is only partially true, as I have a A-to-C charger cable from Huawei that works with everything except my Pixel 4A phone. And my Pixel 4A phone works with everything except that specific cable.
Not related to this exact problem: but also note that the cheapest cables max out at 60W, anything more power needs a new special cable that does its own smarts and communication regarding proving it can handle more power (total nightmare I found, also some computer manufacturers have years of usbc-pd bugs still troubling computer bootups)
It's not a terrible mistake. A terrible mistake would have been having such power available on ports that even a reasonable person might short out by innocently connecting a USB C cable between them.
A couple 5.1k resistors add about $0.00001 to the BOM cost. The terrible mistake is on the designers of devices who try to forego these.
They are likely not following the USB spec correctly. Things like pulling certain pins high or low or having a set resistance between certain pins or communications between the host and device will all affect what goes over the wire and whether the host or the device will accept this. Cables will also have some pins entirely unconnected.
Cheap, bad, shortcuts, etc. will result in an out of spec cable being necessary for an out of spec device to work correctly with an in or out of spec hub. It's terrifically frustrating but a fact of the world.
And this isn't just random no name knockoffs. The Raspberry Pi in certain versions didn't correctly follow the power spec. Both the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 either incompletely, incorrectly, or intentionally abused the USB spec. The Lumen metabolism monitoring device doesn't follow the USB spec. This is one of those things where you want a bit of a walled garden to force users of a technology to adhere to certain rules. Especially when power and charging is involved which can cause fires.
> This is one of those things where you want a bit of a walled garden to force users of a technology to adhere to certain rules.
That’s what consumer protection laws with teeth and electric safety certifications like CE or UL are for, not walled gardens.
History has shown that relying on hardware DRM, like Apple did with Lightning doesn’t prevent manufacturers, from doing dangerous things, because they’ll find ways around it sooner rather than later.
Some badly designed USB-C devices don’t properly negotiate power supply, and as a result, only USB-A (since these always output 5V without any digital or electrical negotiation) or other non-compliant USB-C devices will actually charge them.
I’ve experienced this too and it’s not just no-names. I have a wireless gaming keyboard from SteelSeries, certainly a very legit brand. I lost the original USB-C cord. Tried every USB-C cord I could find, and they power the keyboard and charge it to exactly 1%, but no more.
Found plenty of people online with the same issue but no resolution.
Finally just paid the $25 to get the OEM SteelSeries replacement cable and it charges fully again. wtf… I guess the replacement cable was USB-A to C and I’ve only tried USB-C to C cables?
Actually, in most situations with this problem it is possible to solder 2 additional resistors inside the offending USB-C device. I have done that on a flashlight and can confirm that it fixed the problem.
Adding SteelSeries to my never buy list, along with Unicomp (Unicomp's literally died on me weeks after the 1 year warranty ended. Got told to buy another at full price, went to Ellipse instead at modelfkeyboards dot com for 4x the price and never been happier).
It’s not really PD. It’s just they aren’t usb c spec compliant at all. USB-C has the power pins at 0v by default, and you have to signal there is a connected device to activate 5v. While usb-a has 5v hot all the time.
Since there aren’t any active chips in these cables, an A to C cable happens to have 5V hot on the usb c side, but this should not be relied on as it isn’t true for C to C
PD is optional for USB-C devices, but these out of spec devices don’t even support the basic USB-C resistor-based identification scheme (which is mandatory).
I have purchased multiple devices like this over the years. In all cases, it is that it doesn't have whatever circuitry is required to have a USB-C PD charger send 5v down the line. Using a USB A to C cable works every time. Ironically, using a C to A then A to C then makes it work with a USB-C charger.
In order to get anything from a USB-C power supply, a device needs to have 5.1kΩ resistors from the CC1 and CC2 pins of the USB-C port to ground. Devices that cheap out on these two resistors (which cost well under a cent each) will not get any power from the power supply.
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.
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.
USB-C hosts and power adapters are only allowed to provide 5V if they can sense a downstream device (either via a network of resistors or via explicit PD negotiation).
Out-of-spec USB-C devices sometimes skip that, and out-of-spec USB-C chargers often (somewhat dangerously) always supply 5V, so the two mistakes sort of cancel out.
Careful. Some of these devices may not be USB-C at all but rather just using the port. If the device calls it USB then it's probably fine to use any cable, but if you just see "Type C", it's safest to assume they don't have it wired up according to any USB standard.
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.
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?
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).
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.
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
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.
You need a tester like the FNIRSI FNB58 (not affilate link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BJ253W31). This is just an example and not a personal recommendation, as I've just started looking into these myself.
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.
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.
Thunderbolt cables have always been marked either on the ends or with a sticker wrapped around the cable. Everything else can be assumed to be a 2.0 cable at 60w/140w
They have fixed this, the modern spec has speed and power rating logos that (good) manufacturers can put on the cables. Just assume anything without a logo on it is USB2/5v only and buy some new cables you know the specs of.
The fact that cables have varying speed and power seems like a failure at launch. Who benefits from this? Manufacturers trying to save money on cables? Fuck that. This just means we'll use the cables that actually work everywhere to death and throw the rest out. What a waste.
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)
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.
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).
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.
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.
Readit News
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-Samsu...
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005008363288681.html
But you can also find them in smaller hub form.
https://www.caldigit.com/thunderbolt-5-element-5-hub/
It's the power consumption.
IIRC, USB-C has a base power per port of 15W (5V @ 3A) with just basic CC resistors. USB 2 starts at 0.5W (5V @ 0.1A) and is only supposed to allow 2.5W (5V @ 0.5A) after negotiation. USB 3 is 4.5W (5V @ .900A).
Note that the Caldigit hub linked in a sibling has a power supply of 20V @ 9A. That's 180W!
Deleted Comment
But I believe the specs are that way to avoid problems with OTG devices. If both devices decide to just push a voltage into the cable at the same time, you risk spending a great deal of energy or even start a fire. That said, there are better ways to deal with this issue; those are just slightly more expensive.
A couple 5.1k resistors add about $0.00001 to the BOM cost. The terrible mistake is on the designers of devices who try to forego these.
Cheap, bad, shortcuts, etc. will result in an out of spec cable being necessary for an out of spec device to work correctly with an in or out of spec hub. It's terrifically frustrating but a fact of the world.
And this isn't just random no name knockoffs. The Raspberry Pi in certain versions didn't correctly follow the power spec. Both the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 either incompletely, incorrectly, or intentionally abused the USB spec. The Lumen metabolism monitoring device doesn't follow the USB spec. This is one of those things where you want a bit of a walled garden to force users of a technology to adhere to certain rules. Especially when power and charging is involved which can cause fires.
That’s what consumer protection laws with teeth and electric safety certifications like CE or UL are for, not walled gardens.
History has shown that relying on hardware DRM, like Apple did with Lightning doesn’t prevent manufacturers, from doing dangerous things, because they’ll find ways around it sooner rather than later.
Found plenty of people online with the same issue but no resolution.
Finally just paid the $25 to get the OEM SteelSeries replacement cable and it charges fully again. wtf… I guess the replacement cable was USB-A to C and I’ve only tried USB-C to C cables?
They seem to be a popular brand, but can’t even get charging right. Ironically, the speaker doubles as a portable charger.
Since there aren’t any active chips in these cables, an A to C cable happens to have 5V hot on the usb c side, but this should not be relied on as it isn’t true for C to C
https://www.mikrocontroller.net/topic/458093
Basically the OP is asking what kind of resistors he needs so that he can get 5V out of USB C.
The first response is "No, 5V is always present." (incorrect)
The second response by another poster is "5V is ALWAYS present at the USB port..."
Only the fourth person actually answers the question and does it in a single sentence: "There needs to be 5k1 between CC and GND."
I was under the impression that the USB protocol just fell back to 1a 5v when power negotiation was unsure.
What kinds of devices?
Out-of-spec USB-C devices sometimes skip that, and out-of-spec USB-C chargers often (somewhat dangerously) always supply 5V, so the two mistakes sort of cancel out.
Deleted Comment
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.
Is it a charge only cable (no data)? Is it usb3 5gbps ? Is it 100 watt power delivery? Is it thunderbolt 3/4/5?
USB-C hubs and my slow descent into madness (2021) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30911598 - April 2022 (513 comments)
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).
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!