Best Type C Dongles for Mac & PC
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
1,276 words · ~6 min read
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everyone is making notebooks thinner at the expense of onboard IO the writing's
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on the wall the future is going to be a
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dongle full one so I can either live in
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denial or I can make your dongle shopping whether you self-identify as a
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Mac or a PC a little bit easier
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tunnel bear is the simple VPN app that makes it easy to browse privately and
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enjoy a more open internet to try tunnel bear for free check out the link in the
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video description let's take a quick look at all the contenders for dongle
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King I ordered from Amazon you'll find links in the video description before
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moving on to Performance in order of
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cheapest to most expensive this gting
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product may have multiple typos in the product description but with its promise
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of three USB ports and a wired gigabit
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network connection for 18 bucks it
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definitely needed a closer look the mochin USBC to USB 3 adapter caught my
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attention because at only $20 it offers
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four USB ports and a female type c to
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handle higher draw devices or charging
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pass through this VG a and USB hub from
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AI stood out as a great option for
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business since it still has four usb3
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ports and adds VGA for the boardroom
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projector for only $6 more or quite a
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lot more if you want the HDMI version an
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HDMI option for less than that one this
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QE Trend adapter looks like a pretty
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good deal at $28 as long as you don't expect to add a
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ton of USB devices then if you want to
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add SD card reader functionality you're looking at stepping up to this model
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from Lambo or hm I actually ordered the
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same product from two different brands to see if they were truly identical and
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they are I also picked up this unit from hu
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because of its solid reviews and availability in rose gold even though it
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seems a little overpriced on paper and
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finally there's the Le I ordered a couple of months ago for my Blade laptop
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the tedious shopping experience for which inspired this video the Juiced
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systems bizub so we'll start with what all the
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devices have in common they are all lower cost USB 3 not Thunderbolt 3
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meaning bandwidth and power delivery are
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both limited so don't expect to plug in
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multiple high power devices and get get the full experience unless you invest in
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an external power brick my attempts to
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get around this with another port on the
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laptop my attempts to get around this with another port on the laptop like
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I've seen with some external drives in the past were unsuccessful though your
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mileage may vary they all feel reasonably well built with everyone
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except Ai and Moen opting to take it a
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step further with a metal housing and every single one of them was completely
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driverless on both PC and Mac this is
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especially important for network cards or SD readers where you might be
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plugging them in for the first time out in the field where there's no Wi-Fi to
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download a driver from Windows update
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all the dongles have a short pre-attached cable eliminating one point
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of failure and some manufacturing cost
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but making them a little bulkier to store and meaning you can't repurpose
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the included cable to charge your phone in a pinch and all but the cheapest
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dongles used a single continuous metal
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jacket for the housing of the connector instead of this less expensive type now
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let's talk about the differences for my USB transfer test I used Angel Bird's
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SSD to go pkt 1 tbte the angel bird
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folks provided us with these for video editing when we're at shows and they are
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lit AF they have excellent performance consistency and gave me easily
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repeatable results every Hub performed
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nearly identically with my 10 gbyte test
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file taking about 30 seconds to transfer from the SSD to the desktop curiously
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Apple's MacBook Pro USB 3 Performance was better across the board than the
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Razer Blade late 2016 when transferring between ssds the
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more robust hubs flexed their muscles a little bit not necessarily in terms of
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speed but in terms of completing the race at all I'll forgive requiring extra
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wall power to handle a couple of ssds
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but Hutu moin and Q Trend all failed
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this test miserably for a variety of
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reasons as for HDMI output all of these
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hubs are HDMI 1.4 so up to 4K 30 htz and all but the Q
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trend performed exactly as expected with that one working on the PC but not on
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the Mac for some reason all the hubs with SD card readers were able to max
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out our 90 megabyte test card from
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Kingston no one was trying to sneak a USB 2 card readership in there which was
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nice but the same can't be said for
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Ethernet if you were hoping for full gigabit speeds the gting is too good to
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be true it's faster than 100 megabit but
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not nearly as fast as the Juiced systems so conclusion time then I'm
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feeling great about the choice I made with the Juiced systems Biz Hub it runs
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a little warm and it's one of the most expensive but it's a compact onepiece
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solution that saves me from carrying additional dongles for proper full-speed
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gigabit Ethernet and reading SD and micro SD cards the AI adapters blew me
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away with their power efficiency they were the only ones that could reliably
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power two ssds on both Windows and Mac
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OS without external power making the VGA
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one a great option even if you pretty much just want a USB hub and the gting
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gets my value award it doesn't have charging pass through or the highest
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performance but it's really Compact and cheap if you just want more USB ports
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and a wired network connection but what if what you really want is an
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