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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: 0.244s | 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. more_corn ◴[23 Oct 24 15:44 UTC] No.41926219[source]▶
I have a machine that’s all usbc. My keyboard and mouse are usb-a.

I bought a usbc monitor and run everything from there to the computer with one cable (power, video, keyboard). It’s fine I guess but I still carry a charger when I’m out, an hdmi adapter (most monitors you meet in the world are still hdmi) and a usb an adapter. (Printers). I used to carry an Ethernet adapter, but I only really used it for networking scanning and I don’t really take those contracts anymore.

All things being equal I’d choose the additional ports, but the primary reason to get rid of them is form factor. You can make the machine a lot smaller by removing ports. I don’t really give a crap about that since I carry the other stuff anyway but your mileage may vary. I like the framework idea I may switch to that next time.

Then again you’ll be running windows on it so the computer is ruined anyway so it doesn’t matter what you choose or what you spend.