LMC Tech
Problem solved
Modern laptops removed the ports and sold them back to you.
Hubs, docks and why the cheap one keeps dropping your monitor. Including the power delivery detail nobody explains.
The problem
Hub and dock are not the same word
You want a monitor, a keyboard, a mouse, an SD card and charging, and you have two ports. The hub you bought makes the screen flicker or disconnects when you nudge the desk.
- A hub splits one port into several and is powered by the laptop itself. Cheap, portable, and limited: everything shares one connection's bandwidth and the laptop's power.
- A dock has its own power supply, so it drives multiple monitors and charges the laptop at the same time. More expensive, but it is the one that lets you connect everything with one cable.
- Not all USB-C ports are equal, and this is where most disappointment comes from. Some carry video, some do not. Thunderbolt carries far more bandwidth than plain USB-C. A laptop whose port lacks DisplayPort Alt Mode will not drive a monitor through any hub, no matter what the hub claims.
- Power delivery is the other trap. A hub advertising 100W passthrough loses some to itself, so a power-hungry laptop may slowly discharge while apparently plugged in.
- Flickering or dropping monitors is usually either a hub without enough bandwidth for the resolution and refresh rate, or a hub overheating. Cheap ones get genuinely hot.
The fix
How to choose without guessing
Cheapest and most effective first. A surprising amount of this costs nothing at all, which is not what most sites selling you things will tell you.
- Check your laptop's port first. Find out whether it supports DisplayPort Alt Mode or Thunderbolt. Everything else follows from that.
- One monitor and a few peripherals, working portably: a decent powered hub is fine.
- Permanent desk setup, especially two monitors: buy a proper dock with its own PSU. It will be irritatingly expensive and it will just work.
- Check the resolution and refresh rate the hub supports, not just how many HDMI ports it has. 4K at 30Hz is horrible to use, and plenty of cheap hubs top out there.
- Buy more power than you need. If your laptop charges at 65W, do not buy a 65W dock.
- Metal-bodied units run cooler and drop out less. Worth the extra.
Refurbished
Docks are a good used buy
Buying used is often the best value in tech, and occasionally a terrible idea. Which one it is depends entirely on the category.
Amazon Resale store- Business docks come off corporate refits in enormous numbers, often barely used, and the good brands are built to survive years of being yanked about.
- Check it includes the original power supply, because the proprietary ones are expensive and sometimes impossible to source separately. A dock without its PSU is often not worth buying at any price.
Honesty note
How to actually find refurbished stock.
Worth knowing, because it is not obvious and we checked: you cannot filter an Amazon search to refurbished items from a link. We tried every documented approach and each one quietly returned ordinary new products instead.
The used and refurbished offers live on the individual product page, under the buying box, as "Other sellers" or "Used" options. Find the item you want first, then look there. The Amazon Resale storefront above is the other way in.
Who is telling you this
We fix this sort of thing for a living.
LMC Tech builds websites, software platforms and AI-readiness work, and supports the technology behind them. These pages exist because we answer the same questions repeatedly, and writing them down is quicker than repeating ourselves.
- Our work and portfolio, including Time Out Recovery, Echo Moon Western and LODORi.
- Web and software development: Django platforms and custom builds.
- IT support: the day job behind these opinions.
- Kit we have actually fitted.
- All the problems we have written up.
Rather not do it yourself?
We can just sort it.
Across Lincolnshire and remotely. If you would rather someone specified it, fitted it and made sure it works, that is the day job.