Share your setups/suggestions for limited ports dilemma

[86Dylan86]

Looking to hear about your setup for displays, external drives and accessories via limited ports on these m1 macs. Also open to suggestions for my mac mini m1. I’m looking to connect a monitor via Thunderbolt direct. Also a T7 samsung ssd preferably via thunderbolt , 2 lacie rugged drives standard hdd, sd card reader (possibly built into undecided hub) and a usb for charging wireless mouse.

I understand the thunderbolt connections although only two on the m1 macs are just as relevant as that of 4 on the intel macs as previously one bus was shared for 2 connections. On the m1 macs however one bus is independent to each port allowing for multiple connections at consistent speeds.

Would it make sense to dedicate the monitor and T7 ssd to the thunderbolt ports and use a usb-a hub for the others, would this provide adequate speed or would a loss in speeds be evident? Or to use one thunderbolt for the monitor and a thunderbolt hub for the rest? I will be using the drives for video editing mostly.

Any help would be great or please share your own setup.

 

[jdb8167]

As long as you are OK with a single external monitor, you can expand your ports to 4 with OWC's Thunderbolt hub.

OWC Thunderbolt Hub

I'm probably going to pick one up after Christmas.

 

[86Dylan86]

Looks promising, Not looking to spend more than $60 unfortunately, I guess not many options are out there though.

 

[jdb8167]

Looks promising, Not looking to spend more than $60 unfortunately, I guess not many options are out there though.

For $60 you are only going to find relatively limited USB-C docks. Not terrible but much more limited than Thunderbolt docks (or in this case Thunderbolt hub.)

 

[rhaezorblue]

If you're looking for more than 3ish ports, you're going to have to spend more than $60 on a quality Thunderbolt 3 dock. I mean, I dont technically want to spend money on them either, but sometimes buying crap accessories is just not worth it.

 

[jdb8167]

Also about the same price but this $149 TB Dock looks pretty nice. I like the fact that it uses USB-C Power Delivery for power instead of a charger with a barrel connector.

Belkin Thunderbolt Core Dock

 

[86Dylan86]

I see what you mean about the price, certainly makes sense to go with the better option, fooled myself what i thought they cost.

 

[matrix07]

I need to use a few external HDDs I'm having around so I get this Belkin from Apple and it's working well. Got USB 3.0 speed which is much faster than 2.0 I got from my previous Air.

 

[86Dylan86]

I need to use a few external HDDs I'm having around so I get this Belkin from Apple and it's working well. Got USB 3.0 speed which is much faster than 2.0 I got from my previous Air.
View attachment 1687674

Neat, Is it powered?

 

[matrix07]

It says in the manual that it will charge but I plug 3 HDDs to it and it doesn't charge my Air, which is fine since I prefer the Air not fully charged all the time.

 

[alels]

I have a d6000 that itself has a cheap usb-c to usb-a 4 port splitter attached. I just got my mba so I haven’t done much testing, but yesterday I was able to get 3x1080p @60hz monitors, wired mouse/keyboard, webcam, scanner and charging cables for usb c, mini and lightning devices, all from a single tb port. It of course also charges the lappie.
I know you can get these hubs for $50-80 on eBay, plus $15 or so for the additional splitter. I wouldn’t need the latter if I it wasn’t for the many charging cables requirement.

 

[theluggage]

Ans: wait for M1X/M2/whatever Macs and hope they have more ports and better external display support.

The entry-level MacBooks just don't have enough ports for some of us, USB-C hubs have a laundry-list of bandwidth/latency limitations and it's dumb to have such a super-slim-and-light laptop and then have to tote a hub/dock around, but that's been true of the Intel models since 2016 (and I personally discovered the drawback with super-slim, dongle-ridden laptops with a Vaio 505 back in the 90s) so it's not really relevant here and it's no surprise/scandal that their M1 replacements are no better.

The M1 Mini fares a bit better, with some regular USB 3 ports, HDMI and Ethernet, but it's still an entry-level solution and the replacements for the higher tiers will have to do better.

On a more constructive note: can't vouch for it, but this looks interesting for the Mac Mini:

- but remember that a USB-C hub is just sharing a single USB 3 channel between all the ports. Still, on a M1 Mini that leaves one TB3 port, HDMI, Ethernet and a couple of "proper" USB3s. I'd use the drive bay for a cheap & cheerful backup/archive drive rather than a high-performance extension drive.

 

[86Dylan86]

Think I might just keep the 2 thunderbolt ports for a monitor and the ssd drive, then use one of the usb for my main hdd storage and a usb-3 powered hub for the additional lacie rugged hdd and any accessories via usb.

 

[deeddawg]

Looks promising, Not looking to spend more than $60 unfortunately, I guess not many options are out there though.

That's going to be very limiting - doubt you'll find any Thunderbolt stuff with that budget.

I do use this with my M1 MBP for an external 1080p but not so much as a USB hub - just checked and it looks like it provides 5Gbps, I was getting ~330MBps on my Sandisk external SSD that'll do much higher on a 10Gbps port.

LENTION 3.3FT Long Cable USB C Multiport Hub with 4K HDMI, 4 USB 3.0, Type C Charging Compatible 2023-2016 MacBook Pro, New Mac Air/iMac/Mac Mini, More, Stable Driver Adapter (C35-1M, Space Gray)

LENTION USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter with 4K HDMI, 4-Port USB 3.0 and Power Delivery (3.3FT)

www.amazon.com