CalDigit Thunderbolt 4 Pro Dock

dannyjo22 said:
What sort of drop off do you get on the Pro dock? I use Sandisc extreme SSD's the 1050mbs ones as I didn't want all the enclosure faff messing up a clean look and I have no issues with using Lightroom from the drives. I get 900mbs transfer speeds but wouldn't want to lose too much of that or I would have to look at faster drives and enclosures. The elements hub almost halved it.
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I’ll have a bash later when I’m back home.

Blackmagic Disk Speed test, default:

Orico TB3 enclosure
TS4 direct: 2172.5 write, 2542.9 read
Element hub (via TS4): 1958.2 write, 2541.1 read
MBP M3 Pro direct: 2256.1 write, 2532.9 write

UGreen USB4 enclosure
TS4 direct: 1653.4 write, 1674.6 read
Element hub (via TS4): 1138.3 write, 1034.6 read
MBP M3 Pro direct: 2237.9 write, 1811.2 read

I guess that shows a decent Thunderbolt 3 enclosure beats out a USB4 enclosure!

Disk is NVMe WD Black SN750 1TB, same disk in each enclosure.
 
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@ChrisD.
This says three TB4 ports but one is the uplink to the computer, isn't it? So only two usable TB4 ports on the back? The other USB-C ports are just that, standard USB-C?
 
I've got one of these hooked up to my M4 mac mini and it makes for a super clean setup. I have it under the desk and both my monitors go into it, the keyboard and my speakers then I have my hardware 2FA key attached at the back of the mac mini along with the cable from the TS4. Works really well.
 
You do. It’ll probably be cheaper through the education store as well - it’s £270 with my wife’s blue light discount.
 
Raymond Lin said:
Okay, it looks like I will need one of these...not cheap but will solve all my problems.
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I personally hate my caldigit hub. It doesn't make me coffee when I require it, nor does it allow me to hassle feek about his desktop decoration habits. That's all manual raymondo, and i'm not about that life. it does a bunch of other stuff including let me run a display at 144hz, so I suppose it can stay.

WAIT. Does that mean if i have two of those hubs, I can run two displays at 144hz? Or am I just being extraordinarily thick about the way thunderbolt works.
 
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So, just scrolling online I notice the green Revodok Max 213 for £215 (Thereabouts).

It looks like it has 2 fewer USB-A at the back (but 1 more on the front) and 1 fewer thunderbolt at the back. No Audio or Line out at the back (not a problem, the Mac has it).

£85 difference.....Hmmmmm. Leaning towards the UGREEN at the moment, as the peripherals for USB-A are keyboard, microphone, webcam, low bandwidth stuff which I can solve by putting in a £10 USB-A hub

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Raymond Lin said:
So, just scrolling online I notice the green Revodok Max 213 for £215 (Thereabouts).

It looks like it has 2 fewer USB-A at the back (but 1 more on the front) and 1 fewer thunderbolt at the back. No Audio or Line out at the back (not a problem, the Mac has it).

£85 difference.....Hmmmmm. Leaning towards the UGREEN at the moment, as the peripherals for USB-A are keyboard, microphone, webcam, low bandwidth stuff which I can solve by putting in a £10 USB-A hub
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I am wary of any docks that are not Caldigit. I tried a bunch and all had various issues, and then the CD TS3 just worked, and the TS3+ and TS4 have been equally as reliable. Ugreen maybe awesome, I'd defo test it for the whole of the return month, just to be sure.
 
eurokage said:
I am wary of any docks that are not Caldigit. I tried a bunch and all had various issues, and then the CD TS3 just worked, and the TS3+ and TS4 have been equally as reliable. Ugreen maybe awesome, I'd defo test it for the whole of the return month, just to be sure.
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I asked the same question on another forum and someone at work has 3 Caldigit TS3 at work in his team and 2 broke.

Small sample size I know but it seems Caldigit aren’t bulletproof either.
 
Raymond Lin said:
I asked the same question on another forum and someone at work has 3 Caldigit TS3 at work in his team and 2 broke.

Small sample size I know but it seems Caldigit aren’t bulletproof either.
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I've never had any dock stop working/breaking, I was talking more about driver issues, disconnects and other similar problems. 2 docks dying does seem high.
 
eurokage said:
I've never had any dock stop working/breaking, I was talking more about driver issues, disconnects and other similar problems. 2 docks dying does seem high.
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He also commented that the SD card in the Caldigit is slower than the built in one in the MacBook. That’s not a dealbreaker though.

I will sleep on it and decide. The UGREEN will work but I’ve found a comment from an user that if the DP port is connected to a 4k monitor, the write speed in the thunderbolt 4 port on the SSD drop from 2800mbps to 2000mbps. So there is a bandwidth bottleneck.

although I’m not sure if it’s a UGREEN specific issue but a TB4 issue.
 
ChrisD. said:
I've been after the TS4 for a while. I've been running the TS3+ for about 5 years with no issues but it was lacking 2.5 GbE, my USB-C Time Machine NVMe drive wouldn't recognise via the dock, and I had to use the Mac HDMI port to my AW3423DW to get anything over 60 Hz. I'd been putting off getting one due to the near £400 price, but I noticed last night it was available via Apple for £299 so ordered one.

www.apple.com

CalDigit Thunderbolt 4 Pro Dock

The CalDigit Thunderbolt 4 Pro Dock will connect to your Mac’s Thunderbolt 4 or Thunderbolt 3 port to provide 18 ports of connectivity via a single Thunderbolt cable. Buy online now at apple.com.
www.apple.com

Just plugged it in, full 2.5 Gbps to my NAS, my TM drive is recognised off the back of it, my Dell 4k still runs at 4k/60 as it should, but now my Alienware runs at 100 Hz which I think is the max using DP to HDMI adapters. Very happy, only have a single cable from my Mac now and everything I need runs from the dock. Still pretty expensive I admit, but it's used daily.

This is all on my M1 MacBook Pro.
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Can you use multiple monitors using it with your Mac m1?
 
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