I stole it. - Caldigit TS4 Dock and Element Hub
ShortCircuit
·ShortCircuit
·2023-05-05
·
2,103 words · ~10 min read
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Is he holding balloons?
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Congratulations on whatever you're celebrating.
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Sponsored or not, and this one is sponsored by CalDigit.
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I wouldn't normally make a video about a Thunderbolt dock.
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I mean, how interesting could one of these possibly be?
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The answer today is very.
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This is the TS4, Thunderbolt Station 4 from CalDigit.
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It features a whopping 18 ports of connectivity.
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Oh my gosh, is this bigger than their old ones too?
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Okay.
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Excuse me, 18 ports of connectivity,
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a total of 98 watts of power
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to a connected Thunderbolt compatible computer,
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and another 20 watts of charging
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out of this Type-C on the front.
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As for the rest of the ports,
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they have more pedestrian power outputs,
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but let's put it this way.
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Altogether, you're looking at a power brick
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that is not only large,
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but also,
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in charge.
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Get it?
1:02
Get it?
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In charge.
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It's large and charged.
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Come on!
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That's pretty funny.
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The point is it's a 200 watt brick
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for a freaking Thunderbolt dock.
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I've sorted through all the accessories that matter.
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This one right here is a two foot Thunderbolt 4 cable.
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You can tell because it says Thunderbolt 4 on it.
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Not particularly long,
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but certainly long enough to plug into the back of the dock,
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the one labeled computer.
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There we go.
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And connect to either the right or left side,
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of your preferred device.
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You can also stand it up like this,
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but I'll talk a little bit more about that later.
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You've also got the power brick that I talked about before,
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as well as a standard C13 power connector that goes into it.
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Cause this ain't no little boy.
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I said I'd get to the alternative to standing it up.
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You can also lay it down flat
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with these little silicone feet things.
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I think they've revised the design
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a little bit over the years,
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but fundamentally it's the same idea.
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You just pick any one of the ribs
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that you like along the bottom.
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Oh, you know what?
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I'm not gonna bother my OCD brothers in arms out there.
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And I'm gonna put it on like this.
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Monster.
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I know.
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You put those little feet on there,
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a little something like that,
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or however you prefer.
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Flip that bad boy over.
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And it's not gonna slip around on the table
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when you go to plug in a cable.
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We can actually, we can test that.
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We can actually validate that.
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Let's go ahead.
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That slips a little.
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Let's try it on a hard surface
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instead of an LTTstore.com mouse pad.
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Okay, it could be stickier.
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The really exciting stuff is yet to come though,
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because for me, it's not about the sheer number of ports
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or even necessarily the power output,
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because I use my Thunderbolt dock at a desktop.
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For me, it's about the kind of connectivity.
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So on the front, you've got your SD card,
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you've got your micro SD.
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Yeah, having both of those natively means
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no more adapter sitting on my desk.
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You've also got that 20 watt fast chargers.
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So that's to quickly top up your phone
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or what I'm gonna use it for
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is I like to put my phone on a little stand
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under my monitor when I'm streaming.
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This will allow me to do that and charge at the same time.
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I believe this one does seven and a half watts.
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You've also got a type A on the front
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because CalDigit does not discriminate against people
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who still use type A.
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Headphone, microphone, combo jack.
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And then on the back, this right here.
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Two and a half gigabit LAN, thank you.
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This is the only dock on the market
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that has two and a half gig Ethernet
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combined with all this other connectivity
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so that you can get lightning fast access
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to network shared resources.
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And the thing is that gigabit is fast enough
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for transferring small files.
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It's fine.
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But today, if you wanna edit video off of a NAS,
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you want two and a half gig
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and now you've flipping got it.
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It also conveniently has two more Thunderbolt ports
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off of it.
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That's a funny one.
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I'd actually love to see how this is wired up electrically
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because is it like the first two hops
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of a six device daisy chain?
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Couldn't actually answer that one for you.
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For type A's, you've got a line in,
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iPhone jack, if you don't like that combo port at the front,
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another USB-C, but not Thunderbolt this time
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and DisplayPort 1.4.
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So on this bad boy,
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you can do multiple high resolution displays,
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dual 4Ks on Windows and up to dual 6K displays on Mac.
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To be clear, that's not CalDigit's fault,
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that particular limitation.
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It's just because of the way
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that Apple implements Thunderbolt system.
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It's gone a little bit better.
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One thing that it's missing is HDMI,
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but this doesn't bother me because USB-C or display,
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but this doesn't bother me because USB-C or display,
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but this doesn't bother me because USB-C or display,
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DisplayPort to HDMI adapters
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are pretty much a dime a dozen.
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In fact, they actually sent over a couple of those,
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I think, to show off.
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USB-C to HDMI 2.0,
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does up to 4K 60, I would think.
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It's HDMI 2.0.
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So you put that bad boy on there.
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Oh, and if you've got dual DisplayPort monitors
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rather than dual Thunderbolt monitors,
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oh, that's why they've got the two Thunderbolt ports,
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because that's how they're doing the dual 5K
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or dual 6K displays
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on Mac.
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There you go.
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All right.
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Well, if you're not on a Mac
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and you need to convert one of those to a female,
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whoops, DisplayPort adapter,
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then that's how you're gonna run your dual 4Ks.
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Très intéressant.
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That's super cool.
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Being a PC guy though,
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I'm not going to be benefiting
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from any of those Mac exclusive features.
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Let's go ahead and hook it up to a gaming machine, shall we?
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The big thing I wanna see here is two and a half gig LAN.
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Thunderbolt on PC has really gotten
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a lot better.
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I mean, it was always a little better on laptops
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than it was on desktops,
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but I don't see a two and a half gig Ethernet port here.
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Oh, here it is.
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Now I got it already.
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TS4 Windows Ethernet driver.
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Does this laptop actually charge off of Type-C
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in spite of the fact that it's a freaking gaming laptop?
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Okay.
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That's neat.
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I don't know that it'll do it sustained.
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It might just keep it from dying nearly as fast.
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Power brick for this laptop is freaking 250 watts.
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I am quite disconcerted
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that this network adapter is not showing up though.
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Oh, I see what you mean.
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Here, Brandon, check this out.
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Boy, the way this is labeled is not great.
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Oh my God.
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Who is this?
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I love his bow tie.
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That is amazing.
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Good, this is working.
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Thank you.
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Okay.
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That's super cool.
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If you don't have Thunderbolt,
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it'll operate as a regular USB hub.
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Let's go ahead and plug into the right port.
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There's my Ethernet controller.
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Better make sure you plug into the right port,
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ladies and gentlemen.
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You're not gonna be doing two and a half gig
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over your USB Type-C
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on top of everything else you got going on.
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And that, ladies and gentlemen,
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is why you want two and a half gig Ethernet.
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That is literally two and a half times the speed
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that you would get with gigabit.
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You know what the craziest part is?
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Is there are actually consumer applications
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for two and a half gig now on the internet.
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Like aside from just video editing,
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which has been one of our big concerns
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over the last, well, you know, 10 years.
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Steam games, for example.
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If you have enough CPU horsepower,
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you can actually download games
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in excess of 250 megabytes a second.
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Let's download a game.
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Are we managing to drain the battery?
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We are.
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One minute to full charge.
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Cause we're using up 40% of the CPU to download a game.
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I love it.
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Man, I think this SSD might be kind of weak.
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Ooh, okay, I saw it spike to 100% usage there.
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What are you doing, buddy?
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SSD's at 100%.
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Oh, that's more like it.
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Oh, CPU usage is at 80%.
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Oh man, yeah, we just, we don't have the horses.
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All right, well, maybe not on a laptop.
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Oh, it's an 11900H though.
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If you had a faster laptop, it's actually possible
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you could crack 100 megabytes a second downloading games.
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So there's a use for two and a half gig.
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Of course the TS4, which I will be taking home.
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Do they know that already?
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Yeah, I'm gonna be using this for my personal rig now.
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This thing is so nice, man.
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Having all this IO on the front now, everything.
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I've been using a Razer dock for a while
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that has the computer connection on the front
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instead of on the back, which bless their hearts,
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in my opinion, is not the best way to do that.
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So having that back around to the back
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for cleaner cable management,
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and then having all the ports that I will need on the front,
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that's the way I wanna be.
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But the TS4 is not the only one
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that I'm gonna be talking about today.
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There's also the Thunderbolt 4 slash USB 4 element hub.
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This bad boy is just eight ports,
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but it can do an 8K display.
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It's much smaller and it can still do
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that crazy power delivery to a connected laptop.
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That's why it still comes with a chungus brick.
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That's like bigger than the dock itself.
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Because you won't have so many devices connected to it,
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this brick is only 150 Watts instead of 230
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for the full fat TS4.
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But that is plenty for strong power delivery
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to your computer and
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three Thunderbolt 3 ports.
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There's your power in.
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Four USB type A's.
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And then of course the Thunderbolt connection
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to your computer.
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That's actually super flexible
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because these are all Thunderbolt.
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I mean, don't kid yourself.
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You're not gonna be getting,
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Oh, well I've got a 40 gigabit connection here.
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And then these are all Thunderbolt.
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So it's 40 plus 40 plus 40.
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I have 120 gigabit to connected devices.
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It just means that you get the capabilities
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of Thunderbolt ports.
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So that means that you can easily convert them
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to DisplayPort.
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You can easily break them out
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into additional Thunderbolt devices
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rather than being limited to just USB devices
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over a type C connection.
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And because it's Thunderbolt,
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you can plug them into USB-C devices
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that are not Thunderbolt
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because Thunderbolt 4 is also USB-C capable.
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Let's have a look at what the cable management situation
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might look like for this boy.
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Probably go on the other side for this one.
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And just like that,
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all the high-speed connectivity
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that you are likely to need.
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The TS4 is like the deluxe one.
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This is the elemental one.
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That's why it's called the element hub.
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It's a little smaller, right?
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Definitely more totable.
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Man, I wonder if the element hub can do anything
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without external power.
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Now I'm curious.
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I kind of doubt it.
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I kind of doubt it.
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The answer is no,
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but that shouldn't come as a surprise.
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Thunderbolt 4 is cutting edge.
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If you're going to have this number of devices
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connected to it,
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obviously it's going to need external power.
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Neither of these come cheap.
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The element is 250 bucks,
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but it's nice and compact and totable.
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Whereas the TS4 is 380.
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Pricey, but man, it's never cool.
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And you can check them out at the links down below.
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Thanks, CalDigit for sponsoring this video.
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You for watching.
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Make sure you get subscribed.