> I notice plenty of people plugging the super expensive OWC and CalDigit Thunderbolt docks. These are also pretty junky, they just have big price tags.
Having used actually-junky docks, a good one is worth the money. My TS3+ is in year 3 of consistent, rock-solid performance. Most of its ports are used all the time, the host computer never sleeps (I've used it with both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs), and I've never had an issue that I couldn't attribute to a bad cable.
Apparently you just missed me saying my CalDigit TS3+ failed last week and IT had a whole bin full of others that failed.
It's not the cables.. they handed me a new TS3+ and it immediately worked perfectly and it will probably continue to work for a year or two before starting the process of flaking out.
To be honest with the # of them I've seen break (almost everyone I know at work) the posts here seem like astro-turfing.
You might have a good one, but if you had 500 of them in an office you wouldn't think the product is "good" on average.
> Apparently you just missed me saying my CalDigit TS3+ failed last week and IT had a whole bin full of others that failed.
Nope, that's why I posted a counter-anecdote. Not one has failed in my circle of friends, I think they're ugly but the build quality seems pretty great, so I'm just surprised to hear about your IT department's bin of dead TS3+ that they keep around for some reason. (I can't speak for the OWC dock personally.)
Having used actually-junky docks, a good one is worth the money. My TS3+ is in year 3 of consistent, rock-solid performance. Most of its ports are used all the time, the host computer never sleeps (I've used it with both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs), and I've never had an issue that I couldn't attribute to a bad cable.