Best USB-C hubs and dongles 2024: Add ports to your laptop or tablet

The best USB-C hubs are designed to expand your laptop’s capabilities, allowing you to connect printers, mice, and keyboards via a dongle that connects to your laptop’s USB-C port.

Each of my USB-C hub recommendations contains a variety of ports (including USB-A ports, HDMI, and more) that allow you to connect legacy devices like USB memory keys, display connectors, and more to your laptop. Our recommendations dive into the benefits of each dongle, which we’ve tested and reviewed.

I’ve organized my USB-C recommendations this way: traditional USB-C hubs on top, followed by my picks for the best USB-C docking stations. The latter are a bit bulkier, but tend to offer more connections. I’ll also introduce you to DisplayLink docks, an improved version that offers hardware-based compression to move more data over the USB-C port. More advanced features lie within the best Thunderbolt docks, which I’ve listed separately. It can all be a little confusing, so I’ve included an expanded FAQ and a buying guide below my recommendations to help you make sense of it all.

Why you should trust me: I’ve written about technology for 30 years, and have compiled this roundup of the best USB-C hubs and dongles since 2022, when I started reviewing dozens of these products. I also offer related recommendations for the best Thunderbolt docks, so I understand exactly how complex the simple USB-C port can be and what technology works best with it. Few if any publications will even write about, let alone review, DisplayLink docks, which also provide an inexpensive yet powerful alternative to a USB-C hub. I review those as well. It’s a niche that I know quite a bit about.

Update March 20, 2024: I frequently review new products, but they don’t always deliver enough to make it to this list of recommended USB-C hubs. For instance, I recently reviewed the Ugreen Revodok Pro 13-in-1 USB-C dock, which didn’t quite make the cut. Note that almost all of my product recommendations link to more in-depth reviews.

How to choose a USB-C hub

First, take stock of your peripherals

Here’s where to start: Take a look at the peripherals you own, or plan to buy. Do you have an old external hard drive that uses a traditional USB-A cable? Do you manually back up photos from an SLR via its SD card? Or is your Wi-Fi connection unreliable enough that you’d prefer ethernet? Figure out what ports you’ll need. This advice is also for Windows users; Macs have their own limitations on USB-C connections.

Keep in mind that you may want to use both a mouse and keyboard, and possibly connect a printer, too. You can disconnect a keyboard to print, but it’s kind of a pain.

Next, check out what ports your laptop already has

It’s also important to take stock of your laptop or tablet’s ports: Does it have one USB-C port or two? If your device only has one port, is there a separate charging connection? If your laptop or tablet has a USB-C port and uses it exclusively for charging, you’ll want to buy a USB-C hub with a dedicated charging input port. (In this case, it’s also possible that only the charging port on the hub will work, though this isn’t typical.)

Note how much input power the port allows, and confirm that will be sufficient for your laptop. Otherwise, you’ll be forced to choose between charging your laptop and accessing other devices, which makes little sense. Most laptops will pop up a warning about a “slow charger” if your laptop’s not getting enough juice.

Does your monitor have a USB-C port?

Recently, we’ve begun to see more displays include a USB-C port as well as HDMI and DisplayPort inputs. This is a positive sign (kind of) in that your monitor may be able to eliminate the need for a USB-C hub.

Matt Smith/IDG

Matt Smith/IDG

Matt Smith/IDG

This has a couple of wrinkles. First, monitor ports have never been the most accessible, and trying to find the right port on the back of a big, clunky display isn’t fun. You may find want to invest in a cheap USB-C hub just to avoid the hassle.

Second, that monitor’s USB-C port may actually be a video input — so instead of connecting an HDMI cable between your PC and the display, you can simply run a USB-C to USB-C cable and accomplish the same thing. How do you know to do that? First, check out our roundup of the best USB-C displays, then read it carefully. We distinguish between the two to help you out.

Assess your laptop and peripheral power needs

Keep in mind that the hub’s power port is for taking power in to your laptop, and not out to a phone. But your hub may still be able to charge your phone, with some caveats. A “bus-powered” USB hub connects to your laptop and pulls power from it, which it has share with several devices—and it won’t do it that well.

Some docks will include a USB-C port whose only purpose is to accept your laptop’s USB-C charger. That port will power your laptop as well as any ports connected to it. These devices will make more power available for fast charging your phone. (Your hub probably won’t enable specialized charging like the Samsung Galaxy S20’s Super Fast Charging, however, even if you use the supplied Samsung cable. You’ll still need to connect your phone to its charger for that.)

Making sense of the USB-C technologies

A USB-C port on your laptop can either run at 5Gbps or 10Gbps, with the latter being almost ubiquitous these days. That’s plenty of bandwidth for a printer, a mouse, a keyboard, or a hard drive, even all at once. Products like displays, ethernet, and high-speed SSDs gobble up that bandwidth, however.

We find that the display technologies tend to have the most influence over what you should buy. If you simply want to connect to an external 1080p display—or two—a USB-C dongle should work fine, provided that the dongle has the available ports. It’s certainly the cheapest option. Once you start trying to connect to one or two 1440p or 4K displays, however, you may find that you’ll want to consider options like the USB-C docking stations. You can get around this, in part. Instead of plugging your ethernet cable into the USB-C dongle, you can use a separate Wi-Fi connection, for example.

Traditionally, the only other alternative was a Thunderbolt dock. Provided your laptop had a Thunderbolt port, Thunderbolt’s 40Gbps bandwidth allows for two 4K displays, running at 60Hz, plus various peripherals. (You can use a USB-C dock even if you have a Thunderbolt port, by the way.) USB4, a similar technology, is basically the same as Thunderbolt for your purposes.

Now, there are also two intermediary technologies to choose from: a DisplayLink USB-C dock, and a USB-C dock that takes advantage of something called HBR3 and DSC.

DisplayLink, owned by Synaptics, uses software compression between your laptop and the dock to approximate a Thunderbolt experience over a generic USB-C connection. It requires a software driver, but our experience is that it’s an excellent choice for office work, but not gaming.

HBR3 with Display Compression (HBR3 with DSC) is essentially an industry standard version of DisplayLink. The problem? The technology hasn’t been widely publicized, let alone supported. Our experience has been that docks that support HBR3 work well with laptops using 12th-gen Core processors on up. Laptops with a 10th-gen Core chip inside them aren’t supported, and 11th-gen Core laptops are iffy. If you own a 12th-gen Core laptop, especially a member of Intel’s premium Evo brand, you stand a good chance of success. Otherwise, don’t bother. (We haven’t tested with laptops that use an AMD Ryzen chip.)

Finally, don’t worry about platform branding

Because USB-C is common among Macs, Windows PCs, and phones, some hubs align their branding with a particular platform. Go ahead and use that USB-C that’s billed as being “for MacBook Pro, Chromebook, and XPS” with any Windows PC—we did, and it works just fine. You won’t need any special software or drivers. 

How we test USB-C hubs

We used bus-powered peripherals to test each hub: an SSD, a hard drive, and a rewriteable DVD drive, all to make sure enough power was being delivered. We also ran speed tests on those hubs with ethernet connections, just to detect any anomalous results. We performed spot checks with other peripherals.

We conducted standardized tests to transfer a file from the SSD to the laptop; from the hard drive to the SSD; and then from an SD card to the PC, while simultaneously transferring files from the hard drive to the SSD. In some cases we used AJA’s System Tool app to run read and write tests on connected drives. In almost all cases, the performance was identical, with a spread of about 3 percent—good news for you, as that’s one less thing to worry about. 

We measured the surface temperature while these tests were run. You’ll see some buyers on Amazon pages complaining about how hot a hub gets; some do get on the warmer side. Also, where we could, we measured the power input for each hub.

We looked at how SD cards were inserted—you’d be surprised how many don’t work unless they’re inserted upside down! 

We also noted the cord length, as shorter cables limit your options when positioning the hub around your laptop or tablet. Worst case, a short cable causes a hub to dangle from a tablet whose USB-C port is mounted toward the top.  

After testing our USB-C hubs, we can confirm that some no-names perform just as well as their more well-known counterparts, and for less money, too. One thing to keep in mind: Because price is so critical to our recommendations, know that some of the prices may change as manufacturers offer sales. Therefore some hubs we didn’t recommend primarily based on price could become more purchase-worthy. 

How we test USB-C hubs

We test USB-C hubs/dongles slightly differently than docking stations.

When evaluating a hub or dongle, we first check how closely the ports are spaced. You’ll need a dongle that allows for both USB keys as well as more traditional cords to something like a printer.

From there, our recommendations are primarily based upon what the dongle promises versus what it delivers, and how that corresponds to the price of the dongle itself. We’re seeking the most advanced, most flexible USB-C hubs at the best price. In certain scenarios, we rule out older hardware (that drive a 4K display at 30Hz, rather than 60Hz, for example).

We then check those capabilities using live test hardware that you’d find in your hoe: mice, keyboards, monitors, and so on. We run storage tests (using PCMark’s storage benchmark) against a test SSD to determine the performance.

We go into more detail with docking stations. We perform the above tests, but typically examine a USB-C docking station using the same methodology as a Thunderbolt dock. We connect it to multiple 4K displays and ensure that they can hit the targeted refresh rate. We then perform several storage tests: connecting an SSD to a USB-A or USB-C port and checking the performance using PCMark 10; streaming video to the display; and, while running the PCMark test, continuing to stream video. We also copy a test folder of files from the SSD to the host laptop across the USB connection.

Updated on March 13, 2024 to adjust the FAQ and other information.