Re:Why do USB-C hubs still have USB 2.0 ports? (2021)
by vladvasiliu on Wednesday May 11, 2022 @03:54AM
(#31337037)
> I would be surprised to hear that indeed all the current offerings require wall power, that none can operate off laptop/uplink- I think you are wrong. But perhaps.
Indeed, there are products that don't require wall power. I got a Chinese model [0] off Amazon that does Ethernet + 4K@60 over DP/HDMI (alt-mode, not DisplayLink) and can even drive an external spinning drive, all from the USB connection from the PC. The catch is that it comes with a dual-port cable, meaning it requires two (adjacent!) ports to work. I haven't tried it with a regular cable, so I don't know whether that's a hard requirement. It's also able to do PD pass-through if you connect it to a wall.
One downside is that I've sometimes had the screen go dark for a second, and other people have complained about this on the Amazon page. So it's not clear how reliable this will be in the long run.
Indeed, there are products that don't require wall power. I got a Chinese model [0] off Amazon that does Ethernet + 4K@60 over DP/HDMI (alt-mode, not DisplayLink) and can even drive an external spinning drive, all from the USB connection from the PC. The catch is that it comes with a dual-port cable, meaning it requires two (adjacent!) ports to work. I haven't tried it with a regular cable, so I don't know whether that's a hard requirement. It's also able to do PD pass-through if you connect it to a wall.
One downside is that I've sometimes had the screen go dark for a second, and other people have complained about this on the Amazon page. So it's not clear how reliable this will be in the long run.
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[0] https://www.amazon.fr/gp/product/B09MTTZ36K