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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: 0.218s | 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. maxidorius ◴[23 Oct 24 06:50 UTC] No.41922497[source]▶
I recently bought a Tuxedo InfinityBook Pro 15 [1] which has 2 USB-C ports with one being USB 4 (equivalent to Thunderbolt4), 3 USB-A, 1 Ethernet, 1 HDMI, 1 audio jack and 1 SD card reader.

I'm very much happy with the laptop and its build quality. But most of all, I love the flexibility to not be stuck with just 2 USB-C and needing dongles/docks. I can have them if I want to, but I don't need to rely on them.

I think you don't need to compromise: laptops do exist that can have everything.

[1] https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/TUXEDO-InfinityBook-Pro-1... - Laptop is fully configurable, you can choose to have Windows as the primary OS and can choose between AMD or Intel CPU (my link is for the AMD one)