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CES 2024: Satechi Debuts Thunderbolt 4 Hub, 145W USB-C Charger and More
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Am I the only one who's only had mediocre experiences with external drives on Silicon?
Some that stop working, some that take time to be recognised after a while...
I want my drives to be 100% reliable unless they're just an archive. Most PCs come with an extra slot for another SSD, that's the common sense choice we should force Apple to adopt.
Yeah, I haven't had any issues with my M2 Pro Mini disconnecting drives. I have 3 connected (my DropBox drive, external backup (both SSD) and a mechanical 8TB media drive. Not getting any kind of disconnection issues with them. And the external backup is an SSD in the Satechi stand (the previous non-NVMe version).
The Thunderbolt 4 Slim Hub Pro cost $199 and nets you two thunderbolt ports since one is taken away from the computer to connect to the hub. A few people may need this. But it would have been much better to have four, not three, ports on the back side.
That would be better, but would probably double the price - there are stackable thunderbolt options available, eg: (I don't have one, so not a personal recommendation):
OWC miniStack STX: Mac mini Thunderbolt 4 Storage
Max out your Mac mini / Studio with up to 28TB of Thunderbolt 4 storage and three Thunderbolt (USB-C) ports, offering expanded storage and connectivity.
www.owc.com
Thing is, although TB can be much faster in some situations, not every use-case will actually take advantage of that.
(That would be 10Gb/s - small 'b' or 1.25 GB/s)
Because many people are happy with a cheap, relatively slow (by modern standards) SSD for backup, media library or document storage, and even if you ignore the speed, NVMe is taking over from SATA and offering more bytes-per-buck.
Anyway, most general workloads don't get close to the "peak sustained transfer speed" - and if you're looking to stream raw high-def video or are constantly copying multi-gigabyte datasets then this is not the product for you (and you probably should have got a M2 Pro or a Mac Studio with more TB ports). Even the slowest SSD is night and day c.f. the good old spinning rust hard drives that people are upgrading from.
I think the main "gotcha" with this is not the 10 Gb/s cap on the drive itself, but that everything connected to this hub is sharing the same 5-10Gbps USB 3 stream so if the drive is in constant use and you hang high-bandwidth USB peripherals off it you'll probably see a performance drop. If that's a problem for you then you need an all-thunderbolt solution. Many people won't notice.
That's the problem that Thunderbolt/USB 4 faces - USB 3.1 is "good enough" for the majority of users, so there isn't the critical mass of sales needed to bring down Thunderbolt prices.
Bad link? anyone have the correct link? I can't find it:
The article says 3 downstream TB ports - it actually has 4 TB ports leaving you with 3 once its connected (look at the Satechi website).
You're correct but that's the older device. Here is the new one: https://satechi.net/products/thunderbolt-4-slim-hub-pro
It looks identical but can output more power (96W versus 60W).
Their site could use some work. I only found the new TB4 Slim Pro because I added a "-pro" to the end of the other URL. It doesn't show up in their Docking stations: https://satechi.net/collections/docking-stations
It's possible they just haven't update the links/redirects yet but people should be cautious in buying because it's possible Satechi will send the old device if people go to the old link (or, they might send the new one). Use the new link if buying from them.
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Same here with my M2 Mac Mini. It looks great and I like having the M.2 SSD, but it frequently drops connection. My primary use was the card reader though, which works fine.
I replied about this the other day.
I spread my four external drives (three SSD and a spinner) across two tiny USB hubs and, if I get them plugged in optimally, all is well. But I had been having disconnection issues until I played around for a while. It would have been much easier if they failed to attach but random disconnections sometimes hours later made identification of an acceptable arrangement tedious.
Have now bought a powered USB hub with four USB-C ports and, though very early days, it seems fine with all four drives plugged into that.
Why do you think the new one has fewer ports? The new page helpfully doesn't say anything about the number of ports - but all the photos and video (which is different between the two pages) still show an upstream port on the "front" and three downstream ports on the "back".
Looks like the only differences are the more powerful power supply and 8k@60Hz support.
I don't and didn't say it does: "It looks identical but can output more power (96W versus 60W)." I'm not the commenter you were originally replying to. I was supporting what you wrote ("You're correct") but also providing the link to the new dock. MacRumors didn't link to it and the link you posted went to the old one. I didn't want anyone to buy the older dock instead of the updated version (unless they really want to for some reason).
Interesting. I have a similar product that supports just sata and it never ever disconnects. It even looks like the Satechi one although it's another random brand. But every time i research an upgrade I get complaints about disconnections every time I find something that supports NVMe.
I like the stand & hub for the mini/Studio, except that it doesn't include any ports on the back. If the hub had a couple of USB ports there, I'd be sold. I have a few peripherals that are always plugged in and I don't want cables permanently sticking out of the front of the computer.
For some reason dock/hub manufacturers still love to spam USB-A instead of gradually shifting to USB-C. Maybe because a full-fledged USB-A port is cheaper.
A few thoughts on the stand and hub and not being USB-C only (or mainly). First off, the hub's predecessor was known for use with the Mac Mini, though it could be used with other Macs. The Mac Mini was (and is) a machine that targeted users who already had some older gear, like a keyboard, mouse and monitor (granted, some might buy these things new, but many people already had some or all of them). The Mac Mini was also originally a cheaper Mac than a 27" iMac, and nowadays it's a cheaper Mac than a Mac Studio.
In other words, while it's come a long way, the Mac Mini is a budget desktop Mac for people who already have some Mac-compatible computer gear. Many such customers want to maximize the use of what they have, and minimize spending on new accessories. This is a budget dock (vs expensive Thunderbolt docks) with a clean, stylish look.
A lot of people have some gear with USB-A port cables. USB-A to Lightning to charge a prior generation iPhone or iPad. An SD card reader. The receiver for a wireless mouse/or keyboard. Scads of cheap fairly high capacity thumb drives.
I agree we're in transition to a USB-C world, but there are a lot of USB-A peripherals still out there. Making it Thunderbolt would jack up the price, and there are already Thunderbolt docks. Using dongles would defeat the clean, stylish, Mini-matching look.
More USB-C ports would be nice.
The connectivity problems are related to Apples unreliable USB implementation of standards in Apple Silicon.
We have many USB-C devices (cheap and expensive) which perform flawless on any Windows or Linux based hardware, but are troublesome on Apple Silicon. On Intel Macs it is somewhat better, but still worse compared to other hardware.
We have many USB-C devices (cheap and expensive) which perform flawless on any Windows or Linux based hardware, but are troublesome on Apple Silicon. On Intel Macs it is somewhat better, but still worse compared to other hardware.
Nor I. In fact, when the Fusion Drive on my 2017 27" iMac 5K Retina Mac went out, I replaced it with an external Samsung T7 SSD USB-C drive, and not only do I not notice any performance decrement in general use, but when I open my large Photos library or a big Blurb photo book project, they pop open noticeably faster.
What the Satechi offers may be fine for many people. If you're using it for backup, for example, I doubt it really matters.
The Satechi wall wart is advertised for traveling, which is why it looks like this:
I don't think you'd one to pack one of these in your suitcase
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