CalDigit TS3 Plus Thunderbolt 3 Dock – 85W Charging, 7X USB 3.1 Ports, USB-C Gen 2, DisplayPort, UHS-II SD Card Slot, LAN, Optical Out, for 2016+ MacBook Pro & PC (Space Grey – 0.7m/2.3ft Cable) …

Now it works
I’d taken the plunge to buy an overpriced MacBook pro early last year and, since Apple doesn’t feel the sheer beauty of their devices should be marred by third party (or even their own) peripherals, there’s only 4 x thunderbolt 3 ports on the side. Since I do have a number of peripherals to attach, I looked around and the Caldigit TS3 Plus seemed to be the one which headed everyone’s list. Bought it and attached it, and then several times a day, I would find my lovely new MacBook had suffered a “kernel panic” and rebooted. Naturally I blamed the TS3 and sent a few emails filled with full details of the offence caused to my shiny laptop. None of these emails were ever responded to so strike one for piss poor customer service. This being said, I wasn’t the only one suffering from this problem. Except it wasn’t Caldigit’s fault. Turns out that the new 16″ MacBook pro’s did not enjoy the current version of OSX. Since Apple are a big important company which doesn’t admit any errors in their hardware or software, I was left without a fully functioning machine. Eventually, Apple did update their OS and I then had a fully functioning machine. Since then (and following a hardware update), the Caldigit has performed admirably. All peripherals work like a dream. No issues with connecting phones and iPads via the TS3. The footprint is minimal and there are plenty enough ports to deal with everything I’ve got. it’s expensive but reviews on similar grey boxes were not particularly good. Now all the trauma of the dodgy OS is behind me, I can heartily recommend the TS3.

Great product ruined by quality issues and 2020 Macbook Pro compatibility [Updated]
Having bought one of the new 2020 13″ Macbook Pros (4 x Thunderbolt port model), I needed a hub/docking station to connect up my external drives and other peripherals. I went through a lot of the product reviews and comparisons and the CalDigit TS3+ comes up as favourite many times, and with a total of 15 ports looked like the best bang per buck.I received my hub the following day through Prime. The hub is certainly a decent piece of kit; solidly built of aluminium and the build quality is excellent. The hub comes with a massive brick of a power supply and a quite short TB3 cable.I downloaded the support files from CalDigit’s website and expected to be up in business. I connected it up to the Mac using the supplied TB3 cable, the blue power light on the hub illuminated but no hub was showing up in the CalDigit Docking Station Utility. In other words, no communication between the hub and the Mac.So, I next sent a message to CalDigit’s customer service centre. They replied suggesting that I should try an NVRAM and SMC reset. Bearing in mind that the Mac was brand new out of the box I doubted very much if this would cure the problem, but I gave it a try anyway – to no success. I informed CalDigit of this and they suggested that the hub was faulty and that I should return it to Amazon for a refund. This I did and Amazon credited my account once the return had been confirmed at the Post Office.So, I thought let’s give it another try. These things can happen. And so I ordered another hub from Amazon, arriving the following day.This time when I connected everything up with partial success. All of my backup hard drives showed up, ethernet port worked, card reader worked, audio out worked, USB ports worked. Everything worked except the Dell 2417 external display monitor, which I had connected using a DP to HDMI adaptor. The Dell didn’t show up at all in System Preferences.So, back to the CalDigit website to look for fixes in their knowledge base, but nothing on the subject except their recommendation of using an active DP to HDMI adaptor. Mine was a regular non-powered adaptor so I thought that this must be the source of the problem. £20 lighter and a few days later I was in possession of a CalDigit branded active adaptor, which I promptly connected up…and still nothing showing up for my external display!Yet another email off to CalDigit and a quick reply received with the following:”At the time we weren’t aware of issues with the new 2020 MacBooks however, since then we have come into some new information.Our engineers have been investigating into the brand new 2020 MacBooks and we’ve had detailed reports from several of our customers who have tried many different brands of docks, from OWC, Kensington, Elgato and ours and none of them have been able to output a monitor connection via the latest chipsets in these Macs. There are a lot of issues with the new Intel chips, especially the 10th Gen on the 2020 MacBooks and not supporting monitor connections from Thunderbolt docking stations and only works with adapters.We’re still investigating into this but our engineers suspect that only Apple will be able to fix this as it’s not something we’re able to change as it’s laptop based and not our product. Until a fix has been provided either via an OS update or an Apple supplemental update we, sadly, are unable to provide any more information or troubleshooting steps at this moment in time”So, CalDigit did know that there were compatibility issues with the 2020 Macbooks, but decided not to make this available in the public domain. Shame on you!My next step was to order a Thunderbolt 3 to DP cable. This arrived the next day and I connect the Dell to one of my Mac’s precious Thunderbolt ports. This time I had success and was able to hide my Mac away on it’s under-desk shelf and to enjoy the cooling pad.Some 3 or 4 days later and then all of a sudden I lost the internet. My suspicion was initially the TalkTalk router, but the WiFi was working fine and I got a connection using the same RJ45 cable to my smart TV and to another laptop. A short time later when playing a You Tube video, I wasn’t getting any audio. Here’s me thinking it was an issue with the Harmon Kardon Soundsticks, but having then connected them up to the other laptop, it wasn’t.So, now I have a partially functional CalDigit TS3+ with a presumably dead audio out and ethernet port.Off goes another email to CalDigit customer support (that was 5 days ago) and I haven’t received the courtesy of a reply.This isn’t a knock of CalDigit and I think the TS3+ is an incredibly well built, solid and hugely functional hub / dock. It takes up very little space on the edge of my desk and it offers me all of the connectivity that I need for my peripherals. Competitor hubs generally have a bigger desktop footprint, have fewer ports and come with a higher price tag.I’ll wait until later this week to check the ethernet and audio ports again, but it looks like this baby will be going back to Amazon for a refund again…UPDATECalDigit customer service replied to my last query regarding the non-working ethernet and audio out ports. Firstly I checked the audio settings (Sound) under System Preferences and I found that the CalDigit Thunderbolt Speaker had defaulted to “mute”. So I unmuted this setting and hey-ho I have sounds!They also sent me instructions on how to check the ethernet but the response was not meaningful to me so I asked for a clarification in simple speak. They replied the following day with a quite simple “how to” which I followed. It involved deleting a network settings file, deleting network settings in System Preferences, and doing a Mac soft reset. Once I’d powered back up, the TS3+ ethernet connection was active and I was back in business at last!I didn’t expect all of this trouble from the TS3+ but now I have a fully functional hub and I’m very pleased with it. I’ve updated my review to give it four stars.

16/Dec/2023This is the second unit ordered as the first one I ordered stopped working immediately after i connected. After some research it looks as though it was most likey the internal fuse that blew. Returned immediately and decided to give a second unit a chance.Can confirm everything working ok so far on my setup with the foillowing:**PC**Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen 2 with onboard Thunderbolt 3Power Delivey seems to be keeping the Laptop at 100% battery with a moderate load on the CPUWired KeyboardBluetooth Dongled MouseWired Midi ControllerDisplay port shooting out 3440 x 1440 @ 160HzThunderbolt 2 Audio InterfaceTime will tell but I’m not having any issues so far. I have no need for the audio output from it and the network port but will need that in future so will test then…Can recommend If youre willing overlook the price and go back and forth and return/reorder in order to get a good unit.Now to make it all look nice 🙂

Zunächst einmal: Die TS3+ ist gut. Qualitativ hochwertig, gut verarbeitet, zuverlässig, sehr viele Interfaces (ich glaube sogar die meisten). Alleinstellungsmerkmal: der optische Audio in-/output per Toslink.Dennoch hat sie auch ein paar Negativpunkte, die ich vorher nicht wusste und die das Bild stark trüben:1. Das beigelegte Thunderbolt3-Kabel ist ein sehr kurzes, passives Kabel, über das höchstens 20GBit/s verlässlich gehen. TB3 ist mit 40GBit/s spezifiziert – aber nur mit aktiven Kabel. Preis für ein aktives Kabel von CalDigit: 59 Euro.2. Der integrierte Gigabit-Ethernet-Port ist mit Hardware von Realtek realisiert. Really? Come on. Für das Geld hätte man sich auch einen intel-Chip leisten können. Übrigens habe ich bei intensivem Gigabit-Traffic Verzögerungen am Mauszeiger gehabt – deutliches Zeichen, dass da irgendwas mit den Interrupts nicht nachkam.3. Egal, was ich tat, eine 2TB-NVMe-SSD mit USB-C (USB3.1 Gen2, 10Gbps) kam hinter der TS3+ nur auf maximal 890MB/s – am Mac selbst 945MB/s. Leider hat die TS3+ auch nur einen (!) 10Gbps-Port – dort kam die SSD (Sandisk) übrigens nur auf 690MB/s (!), die 890MB/s erreichte ich am Downstream-TB3-Port.