CalDigitThunderbolt 4 Element Hub - 4X USB4 Ports, USB 3.2 Gen2 10Gb/s, Single 8K or Dual 4K Displays, 60W Charging, 0.8m Cable

Update: Working perfectly again. I contacted Caldigit, and they provided me with a set of steps to try (see below). Shutting everything down and plugging in one thing at a time worked. I am also using an Astro "Luna Display" dongle in one of the two ports to allow me to use my old iMac 27. I have a feeling that is the culprit. It can be buggy. But it works now, so I am back to 5 stars. I'll paste their suggestions at the end of the review in case someone else has this problem.Original review:This worked well for two years with my 2020 M1 MacBook Air. Now it’s dead. I’ve tried new Thunderbolt cables and it is passing through the charging but it is not functioning as a hub for drives and Ethernet adapters. My cheaper hub still works.Caldigit sent the following:Thank you for contacting us. We're sorry to hear you're experiencing issues with the Element Hub.Can you please confirm you're using the CalDigit Thunderbolt cable that came with the dock, and have it connected to the correct port on the Element Hub labelled [Computer]?. If possible, and you have access to one, please try a different Thunderbolt 3, 4 or 5 cable (NOT USB-C). Can you please try connecting the Element Hub to all the ports on your system (if it has multiple Thunderbolt ports) to see if the results are the same?. We would also recommend trying a different system and see if the result can be duplicated that way as well.Along with the above, we would also highly recommend that you power cycle both the dock and your Mac. To do so, please do the following in order:Unplug both the Thunderbolt cable and power adapter from your CalDigit device and remove ALL devices attached to the CalDigit device (Thunderbolt, USB, Monitor, Audio and Ethernet).Fully shutdown the Mac (NOT a restart or put it to sleep) and leave it for 60 - 75 secondsPower back up the Mac and once loaded, log into it.After the Mac has been logged into and finished loading, plug both the Thunderbolt cable and power adapter back into your CalDigit device and approve the connection.Once the above has been done, re-attach each device and make sure to do it one at a time and approve the connection where necessary / when the pop-up from MacOS occurs.Regards,CalDigit EU Support

I searched for some time for exactly my need and this Caldigit fits the bill. My MBP lacks USB-A ports completely and I'm using one of three USB-C ports for my ethernet connection, leaving only two ports. I didn't need all the extra ports that seem to populate today's hubs and docks. Finally my path crossed the Caldigit Thunderbolt Hub with three upstream USB-C (Thunderbolt) ports and four USB-A port (and no unneeded ports), just what I had been seeking. It works great even supplying PD charging via one of my MBP's Thunderbolt ports. And it looks great, matching my computer's look.

This dock is expensive, but it works flawlessly. I tried a Cable Matters and Belkin dock before this, but ran into weird issues with both that made me return them.The only limitation I've ran into is hitting the ceiling of what thunderbolt 4 on Mac is able to handle. Currently, I run 4k 120hz + 2k 60hz monitors without issue. I wasn't able to set my 2k monitor to 120hz, since I ran into stability issues, but that's a Mac problem.

Just what I needed, more thunderbolt & USB A ports.

Seems to work well within certain boundaries. I have it connected to a macbook pro M4 with an external thunderbolt display. I wanted to connect two macbook laptops for high speed transfers. Works well with only one downstream mac. When I connect the second the first one loses it's connection to the thunderbolt hub from a networking perspective.I don't know if that's a shortcoming of the hub or the thunderbolt architecture itself. The hub does seem to run a bit hot though I don't know why. My macbook is drawing power from a wall wart so no idea why it's run so warm.

This review was written immediately after opening the box and testing for what I needed. Will update if needed but for now, it seems like it does what I need.I have a laptop with a single TB3 port (Dell XPS-15 9550) and wanted to use that as a mobile podcasting system. Glad to report that I am getting low latency audio out of my Apollo X4 (64 samples at 48khz) and 4k 30fps video out of my 2 Kiyo ProUltra's via this device.I had a Dell ThunderBolt 4 Dock (WD22TB4) for my work laptop but I didnt want to have to disconnect that (and then reconnect it) to borrow it every time for podcasting stuff. The CalDigit hub gave me more C-type and A-type ports which is what I needed in order to properly connect everything I needed (mouse dongle, streamdeck, soundcard, webcams, etc). The Dell would work well too but this gives me what I need and none of the extras I dont need (display ports, hdmi, ethernet). The big advantage of the CalDigit over the Dell peripherial is 1 extra USB port and half the size.The only thing was that my Dell XPS15 bios complained about the 65w power coming from the CalDigit being too low, though during testing over a few hours, I did not notice the battery losing power at all (laptop was running in "high power" mode while being charged through the CalDigit via the TB port). Its not a terrible extra step to have to plug in the laptop but you know, less stuff is less stuff. I will update on this if needed.EDIT: Used this with my rig this weekend and a few notes.I did need to plug in my laptop if I ran it on "high power" mode. The battery did drain slowly and the CPU did throttle itself as if it were just running on the battery. Plugging the laptop in isnt a big deal but its worth mentioning.The UAD X4 was sometimes unrecognized. I would need to restart the laptop and the hardware in order to get a proper handshake. Not sure if this is a limitation of the TB4 hub, the laptop or my X4 but in general when using my X4 on my desktop, it always gets recognized without fail. Again, not a big deal but worth mentioning. I always restart after Im done setting everything up just to be sure I have a fresh system but sometimes I needed to do that 2 or 3 times until I got the X4's status bar to show up and let me know it was recognized. Restarting the X4 while the computer remained running wouldnt fix the issue. I have a feeling it was the laptops fault as I saw the Windows notivication (error message) that TB was not recognized. The TB application would show the hub but it wouldnt show the X4.The cameras were always recognized without issue.USB dongles for my keyboard and mouse were always quick to respond and didnt drop out.Elgato Streamdeck worked fine as well.