A surprising number of monitor docks only support USB 2 (perhaps because they think people will only use keyboards or mice).

Also, many monitor docks power off the USB ports when they go to sleep, and then you can't use a device on those ports (including a keyboard or mouse) to wake up the computer.

The reason for common USB2 in monitors is lack of bandwidth - the non-Thunderbolt USB leaves only space for USB2.0 speeds next to 4K@60Hz connection.

Most new monitors will however allow you to switch to USB3.0 speeds at the cost of being capped at 4K@30Hz.

There is plenty of bandwidth if DP 1.4 is used. DP1.4 only require one superspeed pair for 4K@60Hz, leaving the other pair for USB3.1 data connection.

I'm guessing the monitors aren't using DP1.4 then, since now I've met many (Phillips, Lenovo, etc.) USB-C screens which have this switch in their settings.

Monitor USB ports also tend to have limited power output too.

If you want to use a webcam and a usb Jabra speakerphone for video calls you may exceed the power limits.

Took me way too long to diagnose the issue

I have this monitor and I really like it.

It acts as both a USB hub and a KVM switch. I plug my MBP in with USB-C, and also attach a Linux desktop via DisplayPort and a separate USB3 cable. When I switch the display between the Mac and desktop, my keyboard and mouse also switch because they're connected to the monitor.

As others have said, using USB C for display leaves only USB2 speeds for other devices attached to the monitor. This is fine for keyboard + mouse but I wouldn't attach an SSD to the monitor's USB ports.

Other nice qualities include connectivity options (USB-C, HDMI, DisplayPort), a very beefy 90 watts power delivery, slim bezels, and highly adjustable height/tilt/rotation. Downsides are no speakers and 60 Hz refresh rate. But I haven't found anything better than this display.

How do you feel about the 32" size? I understand there is a 27" version with identical features.

Definitely a matter of personal space and personal space!

Thanks for all that.

Just be sure your monitor actually supports 60Hz with usb-c. I had a dell once that claimed 4k@60 but they never exposed the menu option to downgrade usb 3 speeds to usb2 speeds to support the 60Hz. I was stuck at 30hz. HP monitors do not have this problem.

The only thing I'd stay for using a Dell monitor is: If you plan to use it with a Mac, be sure that they are compatible. Dell has a fantastic return policy, which was lucky for me, because the first USB-C monitor I ordered from then had a pretty terrible image when I used a Mac. It's no fault of Dell, it is Apple who are rather picky with displays.

If you just need the one monitor, Dell has some great options. I can just have the one cable to my laptop, everything else is wired to the monitor and works great.

I was looking for a dock for a MacBook M1, and was going to buy some $300 box (and there were no absolutely reassuring reviews for any of them) and was compiling the similar looking table - when I noticed that my Dell U2721DE has a sound jack… and an Ethernet jack - and does not have any problems docks have, like overheating.

So the Dell monitor is connected to 3 computers now, it switches sound depending on the video source (!) : USBC, DisplayPort and HDMI all pass sound to my headphones. And Ethernet stays with USBC box - exactly what I wanted. I still need a keyboard/mouse switch but overall “Display as a dock” setup turned out very good for me.

I've had the poor image quality problem with Macs and Dell displays for ages. My go-to fix that usually works is to generate a custom EDID profile for the monitor that lets it negotiate to use RGB signalling rather that YPbPr 4:2:2 crap. I think Apple does this on purpose. LG displays seem to work out of the box.

I Googled "Mac EDID ruby"[0] to try to find the script that I'd found and used.

[0] https://embdev.net/topic/284710

Looks great!

I am using a 350-nit Philips Brilliance 329P9H (manufactured by AOC), and, frankly, the size makes a huge difference contra the need for multiple panels. It works well with Windows and macOS devices.

One does not need Thunderbolt on a device like this; anything latency-sensitive or bandwidth-intensive should be connected directly as is. USB-C is fine.

I'd like having a high-speed (10Gb) network port on the monitor, all connected through the single cable.

Sure, I think some of the latest USB standards should be able to support that while at the same time providing 4K@60Hz. But I'd also like the monitor to support higher resolutions, too.

Good observation. PC Magazine says the ethernet port of this Dell monitor I'm considering is 1000Mb/s. I can probably live with that, though I'd certainly prefer a monitor-hub with a 10 Gb port if I can find one (that still has DP and HDMI inputs).

Pretty unlikely–nor would I trust the connection to fully saturate the 10GbE interface, as, on a monitor, the most important connection is the video one.

this is very much a personal opinion thing but I'd prefer not to have the monitor itself be the dock. I like the idea of having single-cable to the dock and then having the dock split out displayport, 10gbe networking, etc. I thought about it, I tried the Acer X34GS, it just isn't there yet.

The monitors with USB-C charging that I've seen (eg X34GS) have really bad coil whine if you use them for charging... which is sort of like the main point here. and beyond that, it's only 89W, what happens if you want a 140W charger? what happens if you want 10gbe and the monitor doesn't have that? what happens if the thunderbolt part of the monitor is poorly implemented or has problems? thunderbolt is known for being finicky and do you want to trust monitor companies to get it right, when they can't even make a monitor that doesn't coil whine while charging?

and on the flip side... what if you want to upgrade your monitor, or it fails/breaks? or what if you want to upgrade to something better? the monitors with a good dock implementation won't necessarily be exactly what you want, and it certainly will be expensive compared to picking a dock+monitor separately.

it's very attractive in a sterile product-designer sense to have the dock built into the monitor, but dock+monitor is nearly as clean and gives you a LOT more flexibility and reliability in a practical sense. If anything I'd go the other direction and have the monitor powered off a usb-c from the dock lol.

as far as general cleanliness, one of these years I'm gonna cut a hole in my wall and drop some cables to the basement with TB3 or DP 1.4 active fiber cables (not electrical cable so fire code ignores it) and use a TB4 dock as a header for my desktop in the basement, so it will be super clean. You can even run power cables in the walls (technically you probably need this to be speaker wire to get CL2 fire rating) and eliminate all cables except for a couple running to the dock/monitor through the walls. Get a monitor arm for your desk and you can lift everything up and clean it all, etc. Would be super nice, I'm tired of cables everywhere and my desktop dumping heat in my office.

(don't do wallmount arms though... tried that and didn't have very good results because the monitor arm really works best going straight forward and doesn't give you a lot of motion laterally. With a desk-mount arm you can put it where it needs to be, with a wall arm you have to put it on a stud and you can't really move it laterally very much, so if the stud isn't exactly where you want it, you almost have to move the desk to fit the mount, didn't work well.)

See https://dancharblog.wordpress.com/2021/02/05/usb4-tb4-docks/

I use a Gorilla Creek-based Razer Thunderbolt 4 Dock in front of the USB-C monitor, which provides the additional convenience of easily swapping out the source device (Windows laptop with Thunderbolt, Intel NUC11 with Thunderbolt, MacBook Pro M1) while keeping all other peripherals connected.

In this setup, the webcam and the USB conferencing headset connect via USB Type A at the monitor's built-in, lower-speed dock, and the keyboard, mouse and high-performance audio interface (plus occasional storage) connect at the (higher-speed) Thunderbolt dock.

> as far as general cleanliness, one of these years I'm gonna cut a hole in my wall and drop some cables to the basement with TB3 or DP 1.4 active fiber cables (not electrical cable so fire code ignores it)

Is it possible to purchase active fibre cables that are unpowered? I understood that these cable includes a pair of copper wires for power (the fire hazard) in addition to the optical link for data. And that the active components of these cables use (and hence require) that transported power.

afaik most active fiber cables require power at both ends - I know the Corning TB3 active fiber cables work like this, I believe most of the displayport cables do as well. And that's because there's not a powered pair in there.

Thanks, "Does not provide bus power" and upto 50 m (edit upto 100m). Sounds fantastic. Do you think you'd make wall ports out of them?

When searching for active cables, all I saw were 2m and providing 100 watts of power.

I agree with your points, though I was mainly thinking of plain USB-C, not TB.

The former seems more and more common among monitors, so it should be easier to find the kind of monitor you want.

But it's also true that it's probable for your connectivity needs to change before you want to change the monitor.

The Lenovo ThinkVision P27u-20 27-inch Monitor is Thunderbolt 4 and cheaper, but also smaller and the ethernet port is still only 1Gb/s.

I have two monitors of this model and they work great with both my work and personal laptop, both of which run Linux.

You can connect the monitors with a display port cable, then use a single USB-C cable to connect both to the laptop in one go. The dock also works great for everything I've needed it for. (dock only works on one monitor when daisy-chaining them, but that's no big deal and appears to be a fundamental limitation of using display port to daisy-chain.)