Forgot to mention: I have my laptop connected to a USB keyboard and USB mouse
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I even saw one laptop that only had 2 USB-C ports, with 1 of them to use for charging. (Dell XPS 13 for example)
It's very important for me to connect my laptop to a monitor, and to use earbuds, be connected to ethernet, and to have a charger going, all at the same time. I have an old laptop with an HDMI output port, USB, and direct audio jack for earbuds.
I'm struggling to accept that dongles are fast enough or reliable enough. What if I get a HDMI dongle or audio dongle and the connection keeps dropping on my video calls? A direct connections feels "safer" to me than a USB-C splitter.
What do you think. Should I still look for laptops with direct HDMI/Audio/USB connections, or are USB-C only laptops still reliable enough even if you need a dozen different dongles?
My monitor acts as a dock. My monitor is powering my laptop, handling the video output, and has the keyboard, mouse, headset, and camera connected to it.
All I have to do is plugin one cable and I'm done. It's a good setup. The monitor even has a monitor-to-monitor hub so if I get a second monitor, all I have to do is connect the two monitors. Still only one cable coming to my laptop.
One goes to a dock, providing most of the connectivity and charging, the other goes to two daisy-chained thunderbolt displays.
I'd use a single port if it could drive four monitors.
Except for one ancient HP Z24 screen whose USB-C port is infuriatingly finicky, I'm docking with one USB-C cable without issues with all of my modern equipment (plus USB-C switchers to switch between the desk PC and a mobile device). On occasions where I need the extra I/O, the added weight and volume of the adapters and the dongle inside the sleeve are negligible ; I always have them on hand and can't recall the last time I had an issue with them.
If anything, it's actually cables I usually have problems with.
For display out, the HDMI out is generally more consistent, but nothing really wrong with Display port over usbc, it just sometimes needs plugging/replugging.
If you're only going to be using them in one place (e.g. your home office) then go for a dock - it's nice to have everything connected with a single cable and a number of monitors have suitable docks built in these days.
If you'll want them on the go then yes, I'd at least look for something with the audio and hdmi ports built in just for the convenience factor.
Audio is probably fine... the standards there don't change as much.
Ethernet is hit-or-miss for me. On my Macbook with an expensive ($300ish) dock, the port works 90% of the time... 10% of the time it'll just randomly shut off until restart. Another USB-C ethernet dongle (with only that one port) works 100% of the time. But either is a PITA compared to a built-in ethernet port in the laptop.
I don't have a choice now that I've gone to Macs, but if I were buying a Windows/Linux workstation PC, I'd absolutely get all the ports I can – ESPECIALLY HDMI and ethernet. USB-C is a nice idea with terrible real-world implementations that are usually 75% compatible but almost never 100%.