Those Dell ones that come with the XPS caused us endless problems at work. Higher res screens would just not work properly. The only one that consistently just worked was the apple HDMI/USB-A/USB-C charging dongle.

Sounds to me that you for some reason got the older USB-C 3.1 / Gen 1 docks those are limited to 5gbps which means no 4K@60 the Gen 2 USB-C / TB3 docks work quite flawlessly as long as you ofc plug them into a Gen 2 or TB port…

They should be able to get 4k@60 with the older docks. I have such an older monitor which works fine. It's just that the usb 3 ports work at 480 Mbps.

With USB->DP adapter yes. With a hub offering USB3 ports, mostly no. Once both lanes are in DP-alternate mode (needed for 4k@60), there's no bandwidth for USB3, only the separate wire for USB2. So here it depends how it is internally connected, and whether it can switch USB3 ports to USB2 or not. Many hubs can't do this.

This echos the same problem that I had with the older Lenovo "docks" (hub). The newer ones work without an issue.

I'd second this.

Work in a large F50 and all the enterprise grade ones we've had are decent.

This is the current model they are giving folks:

https://us.targus.com/products/usb-c-universal-dv4k-docking-...

I've been running an Intel MacBook Pro (last intel version I think) on it the last few months with 2 external HP displays, keyboard, mouse, and it is a solid performer.

Argh, DisplayLink :(.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/usb-graphics-adapter,30...

Yes, those displaylink docks are fine for office productivity work, but not that suitable for gaming or media consumption because of the cpu load. On the other hand, I plugged my m1 air into one at work and the cpu load was reasonable even while videoconferencing, so I suppose eventually the overhead of displaylink gets small enough not to be a problem.

As another commenter stated, bleh to DisplayLink. Also, what monster designed it so 1! of the 4 USB-A ports is upside down? This is why we cannot have nice things.