My Caldigit Element 4 Hub seems to be dead

[EugW]

Since I work in IT and have for 30 years I’ve only had a handful of times had to pay to ship a product off to get fixed. 90% of the time they pay for it. Like I said, I’ve got a lot of tech experience and it’s what I’ve seen. Caldigit was the first in a while I had to pay for it.

I'm curious. How many of those were from small companies like hub makers though? Since you're in IT, as examples I would expect shipping costs covered from larger companies who make higher cost products, like say Cisco, Dell, and Apple (although interestingly Sony was a major company who didn't cover shipping for warranty returns), but it seems more hit and miss with smaller companies who sell lower cost products.

For example, I was looking at getting a Club 3D Thunderbolt hub as the the product is reasonably priced and they have a 2 year warranty. However, their warranty requires the user to pay for shipping for warranty returns, like CalDigit.

The identical Plugable Thunderbolt 4 hub was more expensive (although it includes an HDMI dongle), but luckily today it's on sale at Amazon for Prime members for 20% off, and I think shipping may be covered under warranty since it appears to be done through Amazon, although the shipping details aren't spelled out. Its warranty is also 2 years.

 

[silverlakerCA]

The TS3 that died was only a year and a half old. I had an external hard drive enclosure hooked up and my scanner. That was it. It's annoying and I'm waiting to hear from CalDigit customer service.

 

[Berries-A-Million]

I'm curious. How many of those were from small companies like hub makers though? Since you're in IT, as examples I would expect shipping costs covered from larger companies who make higher cost products, like say Cisco, Dell, and Apple (although interestingly Sony was a major company who didn't cover shipping for warranty returns), but it seems more hit and miss with smaller companies who sell lower cost products.

For example, I was looking at getting a Club 3D Thunderbolt hub as the the product is reasonably priced and they have a 2 year warranty. However, their warranty requires the user to pay for shipping for warranty returns, like CalDigit.

View attachment 2118151

The identical Plugable Thunderbolt 4 hub was more expensive (although it includes an HDMI dongle), but luckily today it's on sale at Amazon for Prime members for 20% off, and I think shipping may be covered under warranty since it appears to be done through Amazon, although the shipping details aren't spelled out. Its warranty is also 2 years.

View attachment 2118152

Yes, most were larger companies. There were a handful of small ones though. On a personal note, Ring is not that big, before Amazon bought them, they also paid for shipping.

 

[hajime]

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[Monstieur]

Mine just stopped working yesterday after a year. It used to get uncomfortably hot when charging a MBP. It still charges the MBP, but there is no LED and USB / Thunderbolt are non-functional.

 

[phrehdd]

Your hub may have a problem or perhaps the power supply or the cable from the power supply or a connection to your computer.

I have an Element and it runs fine but I never doubt others when they say they have an issue on any hardware. My suggestion is to contact CalDigit and see if they can help you troubleshoot or acknowledge an issue that has no remedy.

My Element has SSDs attached, USB to headphone, and sometimes 2.5 traditional external drives.

 

[ChoPraTs]

Did any of you solve your problem?

I was thinking about purchasing the Caldigit Thunderbolt 4 Element Hub or its alternative from OWC.

I like the Caldigit because it has more ports, it's reversible and it has the connector to the computer on one side. These are not very important things, but the performance of the two seems to be similar so, these small details would tip the balance in favor of the Caldigit.

But seeing as there are so many negative comments here and in other posts, I'm questioning if the OWC option could be safer.

Were any of you able to solve the problem? Maybe with a firmware update or changing the power supply for another one?