SonnetEcho 5 Thunderbolt 4 Hub

Where has this been all my life? Finally a real hub for thunderbolt (4) that works just like a USB hub. Plug it into a thunderbolt port on your laptop and you get 3 ports on the hub. Sounds obvious and simple but it's something that's been unavailable for so long, and is almost certainly why thunderbolt/lightning isn't more popular.

I was looking for a device that could passthrough usb c video to my usb C monitor. I needed it to have more than 65W of PD charging. This fit the bill and works. I use this device with both thunderbolt and non-thunderbolt devices and they all work with my usb c monitor.

As it turns out, the problem was with the cables. It seems to be stable now.≈===================================I was really looking forward to this TB4 hub to connect my downstream USB DisplayLink adapters for my monitors. I was hoping to save ports on my Dell XPS. It initially worked exactly as promised. Unfortunately, after a few minutes it overheated, blanking out all of my displays. Maybe it will work better for others.

I got a pretty good laptop - Dell XPS 15 7590 with i9, 64GB RAM, etc. - with only 1 TB3 port. I'm currently using a 10 GBit RJ45 LAN TB3 Adapter and the TB3 port is occupied. After the company recommended me to buy this hub I got it and received today for tests. Tried to connect it a few times. Each time the computer tells, that it cannot support the full functionality of this hub. The Bug is TB4 and backward "compatible" while the laptop is only TB3 with USB-C type connector. Ok, net I connected the 10 GBit card, same vendor, btw, tried several times and every time it connected to LAN with only 1GBit, not 10GBit as I'd expect. Unfortunately, the hub goes back. I'd wish to keep it if it worked, but... it seems it doesn't have full compatibility with my laptop. Contacted Dell and they recommended 2 docks. Checked them just to make sure that they are pretty obsolete with a very old configuration, USB3.1 ports, 1GB RJ45 connector, couple HDMI, etc. So it's way worse, that the current device, but... it downgraded the LAN connection, which is critical for me since I'm using a 10GBit card on my NAS and 1GBit is very slow. Maybe it will work for someone, but not with this particular laptop. I hope one day we will get a good hub/switch/dock with 3-4 TB3/TB4 ports, able to support what we need.

I have a Surface Pro 8, running Windows 11 fully patched.Basic peripherals are working as expected via the hub, however the Surface's battery-life saving Smart Charging feature is cycling on and off and the related notifications are very annoying. This happens when powering the computer via the hub's UBC-C cable but doesn't happen with other chargers.Sonnet's customer support were unable to resolve the issue. I'm returning the device and will try the similar Akler product.

I purchased 3 of these for work. Two for M1 MacBook Pro's and one for an Intel MacBook Pro. The monitors connected to it cut out intermittently or do not work at all, the ethernet connection randomly drops among other problems reported by all three users. Sonnet support was zero help after emailing them back and forth for about two weeks. They told me they should just work, well they should, but they don't and that's the problem. They were not able to provide any solution to fix the problem. Ended up replacing them all with reliable thunderbolt docks from Plugable. Also tried them on a brand new M1 MacMini with the latest Mac OS and it doesn't even recognize it Echo 5. So steer clear of this one.

The product description is quite misleading. It isn't clear which computers support dual displays, but the packages documentation made this very clear.All in all you would be better off purchasing a much cheaper USB hub without dedicated power.

After returning this I learned that the reason the CamLink 4K fails is because of a setting you can only change under windows. Something isosynchronous. Updating with five star rating as this issue isn’t the devices fault