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Laptop Ports: Is USB-C only fine, or should I get HDMI,USB,Audio if I need them?

25 points johnnybzane | 1 comments | 18 Oct 24 19:31 UTC | HN request time: 0.43s | source

I'm on the market for a new laptop (with windows OS) and I've noticed quite a few laptops are USB-C ports only now.

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?

1. unkoman ◴[23 Oct 24 06:41 UTC] No.41922444[source]▶
I run USB-C with one cable to a Thunderbolt4 dock station (ThinkPad Hybrid USB-C with USB-A Dock) running two high-res screens from my Macbook Air M2 + all other accessories.

Plug in one cable and I'm done.

Note: Most docking hubs only support a feature of DisplayPort called MST to run two monitors off a single connection. The USB-C connection to the hub is using something called Alt Mode to carry the video signal using DisplayPort protocol. MacOS only supports MST in mirror mode over USB. It needs to be Thunderbolt for full MST support with dual, unique displays.