5/26/2023 0 Comments Displaylink usb graphics r7 370That helps justify the price of Plugable’s dock. But the specs fall a bit short: the GIQ dock supports up to two 2048×1152 displays, while the IVIIN claims that one display will support 4K60, while the other will support 2048×1152. While we haven’t tested either the $89 GIQ USB-C Hub or the $89 IVIIN USB-C Hub, both of these DisplayLink hubs hit that sweet spot, price-wise. What we’d hope for, however, is a price that’s somewhere in between that of a generic USB-C dongle and a full-fledged Thunderbolt dock. One of the troubling issues with more advanced DisplayLink docks like the Plugable UD-ULTC4K is that it offers a very rough equivalent to a Thunderbolt dock, yet for the price of a full-fledged dock itself. Not all DisplayLink docks are created equal. Nor did we see any change in using the included, standard USB-C cable versus swapping it for a dedicated Thunderbolt cable, either. That may be the case, but using two laptops - one with a discrete GPU (a Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio), and one with integrated graphics (a Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 2) - we saw no difference in performance. You may see some reviews of DisplayLink USB-C docks that indicate that DisplayLink doesn’t play nice with discrete GPUs. We didn’t test the latest first-person shooter on our budget notebook, but otherwise the UD-ULTC4K performed much better than expected. We discovered what you might expect: largely staticly rendered games like Cities: Skylines played with absolutely no noticeable drop in frame rate at all, even at 4K. We were explicitly told not to game on the UD-ULTC4K, but tried it out anyway. Protected content played back via Netflix, however. There was some noticeable stuttering - nothing too dramatic, but there. The video quality defaulted to 1440p in the settings menu, and delivered less than that. Suddenly, YouTube dropped frames like crazy - 1,223 out of 10,000 - and had to pause the video while it caught up. That changed when I tried copying a large set of files from an external hard drive over the same bus. In real-world terms, YouTube delivered good quality video with hardly any stutter. On the other hand, it only dropped 35 frames out of 10,000. YouTube only played back the “4K” video at 1440p, upscaled to near-4K quality. But YouTube doesn’t always deliver what you request, based on its knowledge of your hardware and how well it plays back video. PCWorld tests dongles, docks and hubs in part using a 4K, 60Hz test video streamed from YouTube. But these larger docks may not have the DisplayLink capabilities called out in the specifications, or even offer them. We consider a USB-C dock to be a larger device, possibly powered, with even more expansion options. These dongles typically include a few USB-A ports, a USB-C port for charging or further expansion, and often an HDMI port or Ethernet port. We typically consider a USB-C hub as part of the exploding number of dongles connected by a USB-C cable to the host PC. Instead, vendors will sometimes use “USB-C dock” instead. Shopping for a DisplayLink dock can be a bit confusing, too, since the term “DisplayLink dock” isn’t really in vogue. We haven’t tested any cheap USB-C hubs that offer DisplayLink compression inside, though we’ll point you to some later in this story. That’s also the price range of recent DisplayLink docks like the Plugable UD-ULTC4K, though, which retails for $279. While a travel Thunderbolt dock can cost about $170, the best Thunderbolt docks usually cost between $250 to $300 or so. The best USB-C hubs and dongles typically cost between $25 and $40. Unfortunately, how DisplayLink interacts with your PC and GPU means that your Windows PC will sometimes encounter glitches, such as the inability for devices like KVM switches and powerline adapters to work properly. A DisplayLink dock requires software drivers to enable data compression, so you’ll need to download the appropriate DisplayLink software from the dock manufacturer. USB-C docks and Thunderbolt docks alike are also generally plug-and-play right out of the box. For one, DisplayLink docks aren’t designed for gaming or driving external GPUs. They do, however, have some fundamental limitations. Because of the inherent bandwidth limitations, they’re a good choice for office workers, who can use those extra displays for static applications like email, chat, spreadsheets, or office work. DisplayLink docks therefore provide some of the native functions of a Thunderbolt dock, namely the ability to drive multiple high-resolution displays.
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