The Quality of My Dock

I’m looking to level up my accessory gear, and realize that my company issued cables and docks may be holding me back a bit. So I’ve come to realize that my USB-C cable (presumably) from my M1 MacBook Air could be swapped out for a T3 cable to increase speeds. But I’m now wondering if I need to swap out my dock, too. I’ve got a few USB-A items connected (cam, headphones, charger), ethernet, and HDMI to my Sony display. I have no idea if my dock supports T3. So I’m assuming that if I swap my cable, I’ll want to swap my dock, right?

Does the dock say that swapping for T3 will give improved performance?

USB-A is self-limited. Ethernet is also limited depending on your router and the cable quality to the router. Finally, I believe HDMI has its own bandwidth depending on its protocol.

In summary, without further details, the only improvement I can see is the case when the dock supports a T3 connection to support additional T3 ports. Using USB-C to connect the T3 port to your mac will down-throttle all the incoming T3 lines. Changing the USB-C to T3 cable should have no effect on anything else. Certainly not the USB-A, probably not the HDMI (depending on its protocol), and perhaps not the ethernet (depending on router/cable limits).


JJW

Thanks @DrJJWMac ! I’ll give those a look over and see what I uncover.

What doc are you using?