Are Thunderbolt Docks a bad idea?

Question

Are Thunderbolt Docks a bad idea?

I have a new 16 inch MacBook Pro M1 Pro Max. I've purchased a Thunderbolt 4 dock which is connected to a bevy of accessories: power, display, ethernet, Time Machine drive, webcam, USB mic, headphones, etc. I was drawn by the seductive dream of connecting all those devices with just one single cable connected to a single port on the MBP. However, I'm concerned that there may be some performance degradation by sending all that hardware thru a single pipe, even one as fast as Thunderbolt 4. For instance, the webcam appears to be freezing intermittently. Is this a bandwidth problem, or something related to the dock/cable?

Can the Thunderbolt spec accommodate such high traffic? Or would I be better off sticking with using all of the MBP's native Thunderbolt ports to spread the load?

MacBook Pro (2020 and later)

Posted on Feb 11, 2022 4:58 PM

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Answer 1

Feb 11, 2022 6:57 PM in response to Adam J. Bezark

Adam J. Bezark wrote:

I have a new 16 inch MacBook Pro M1 Pro Max. I've purchased a Thunderbolt 4 dock which is connected to a bevy of accessories: power, display, ethernet, Time Machine drive, webcam, USB mic, headphones, etc. I was drawn by the seductive dream of connecting all those devices with just one single cable connected to a single port on the MBP. However, I'm concerned that there may be some performance degradation by sending all that hardware thru a single pipe, even one as fast as Thunderbolt 4.

For instance, the webcam appears to be freezing intermittently. Is this a bandwidth problem, or something related to the dock/cable?

Why not try your webcam plugged directly in and report back your success or failure...

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Answer 2

Feb 11, 2022 10:23 PM in response to leroydouglas

Thanks for the suggestion. It works fine in the old setup: the camera, which has 4K HDMI output, was plugged into an Elgato CamLink, which goes into one of the USB-A ports on a Satechi USB-C hub connected to the MBP's left two Thunderbolt ports. This results in a clean video image with no dropped frames. When the same camera/CamLink combo is plugged into the new OWC powered dock, the image freezes and unfreezes every 15-30 seconds. So I reckon it's one of two problems:

1. Too much data load for one Thunderbolt port (the one on the right), or -
2. Incompatibility issues between the camera, CamLink and the OWC dock.

If anyone can think of other tests or solutions, I'd love to hear them...

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Are Thunderbolt Docks a bad idea?

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