Dock recommendation for M1 MacBook Air that is replacing 2015 MacBook Air

Hardware
1

Hi, planning on replacing my wife’s 2015 Air

Will need to visit dongle/dock town as her current peripherals won’t connect to the M1 Air out of the box

This is what she currently has plugged in:

  1. USB ethernet adapter (for when wifi is flakey)
  2. DisplayPort adapter for connecting to her external 27" monitor (I’m sure the monitor has HDMI too)
  3. USB thumb drive for nightly CCC backups

She’s not a power user by any means, so doesn’t need the latest and greatest dock - just needs something that will replace her current functionality

Would appreciate any recs for reliable and not too costly docks that can accomplish this

Thank you in advance!

2

I’ve been looking at the Anker tower docks but can’t pull the trigger due to price. They have good reviews and cover everything you need.

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3

Thank you, yeah, looks nice but overkill for my wife’s needs

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4

I’m in the same boat and was looking at this Anker device. Seems fast and reasonable price

5

I use the CalDigit dock for the desk, but for travel I use a big dongle from Ugreen. Mine is very old so I don’t see it on Amazon, but it’s something like this :

https://www.amazon.com/UGREEN-Ethernet-Delivery-MacBook-Windows/dp/B082LPFM1X?ref_=ast_sto_dp

It’s worked well for me. Not as convent as a real dock but smaller and less expensive for sure.

6

Anyone uses the OWC Thunderbolt 3 dock? I’m staring at that one… M1 has only two ports, so a dock seems to be a must for my use-case.

7

I have an OWC Thunderbolt 3 dock but not using it much right now. My hope was that I would just connect one cable from the hub to my MBP for everything including the external monitor and all my external disks. Unfortunately the OWC hub’s monitor support tops out at 4k and my monitor is an ultrawide so the OWC hub can’t drive it. So I plug my MBP into the monitor and the monitor powers the MBP, and then if I need one or two disks connected I still have enough ports to plug them in directly.
I find I use my Vava travel dock (https://www.vava.com/products/usb-c-hub-9-in-1-adapter-with-pd-power-delivery ) when I need to connect wired ethernet, read camera cards or USB sticks and it also has an HDMI port. I’d recommend this one because you’re always going to want a travel dock anyway.

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8

Not planning to use a ultrawide or >4K. Other than that is seems to be a solid choice…

9

Since writing this I remembered that I was worried about the MBP trying to charge from both the LG ultrawide and the OWC dock simultaneously, but it appears that Macs charge from the one input that offers the highest power charging. I’m running with both connected to the MBP and there are no issues so far.

10

I posted this in another topic but I think it’s relevant here too: If you’re going to drive a 4K monitor then it’s worth noting that most (all?) USB-C hubs that have HDMI support it at only 30Hz, which is a pretty bad experience. If you want 4K at 60Hz, you’ll likely have to go with a Thunderbolt dock.

This is a not bad overview of what’s out there: https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/11/20/best-thunderbolt-3-docks-for-your-new-mac-with-the-m1-processor

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11

Thanks for that link

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