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mectojic

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Dec 27, 2020
1,232
2,376
Sydney, Australia
I'm an unashamed iPad Pro M1 heavy user. I use it daily for a ton of work.
My most 'heavy' usage is using LumaFusion (and perhaps Davinci soon). For multi-cam videos I'm importing files from SD, microSD, USB drives, and AirDrop simultaneously, and copying them onto a Samsung T7 SSD; when editing I use external speakers 3.5mm port, a mechanical USB keyboard, and occasionally I also use HDMI for external display; when I do this, I use up every single port on my USB-C hub.

I'm feeling a little at the limit of what I can do with a hub like this. I think the hub is only USB 3.0 speeds. The hub is powered through the iPad, and I imagine that it's bottlenecked by the output of all these devices through the single 3.0 connection. Transfer speeds aren't fast enough.

I want the very best for my iPad, and I think I'm ready for a really good, thunderbolt, externally-powered dock. I know about the Caldigit TS4, which has all the ports I need, but feels overkill. The TS3 is lacking some ports I need, like MicroSD.
Can anyone suggest a nice dock?

TLDR: Need a dock with 2-3x USB-A, 1-2 USB-C, MicroSD + SD, headphone jack, HDMI, external power, thunderbolt speed.
 
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