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?
You could also attach a USB audio DAC for headphones which might be handy since non-Apple laptop DACs aren’t very good.