Dongle vs cables

[LDNmilsco]

Hey everyone. Sorry for such an asinine question as my first post, but here goes.

 

In relation to connecting a laptop to a television when out on the road, are there any drawbacks to using a USB-C to hdmi cable over a dedicated hdmi cable into a USB-C/hdmi dongle.

 

The reason I ask is the dongle is cumbersome, an additional item to carry and potentially to fail, and when looking at ‘better brands’, the dongle is invariably many times more expensive than a straightforward cable.

 

I’ve checked the specs for the cable I’m looking at on Amazon (UNI USB-C to hdmi) and the numbers all seem good (supports up to 4k@60hz which is more than sufficient for me). I’m just not sure if I’m missing something incredibly obvious that would mean it’s better I bite the bullet and buy an hdmi dongle.

Thanks  

 

Scott

[Guest]

It's basically the same, you might get a tiny bit more latency but it doesn't really matter either will work fine.

[RAS_3885]

17 minutes ago, LDNmilsco said:

Hey everyone. Sorry for such an asinine question as my first post, but here goes.

 

In relation to connecting a laptop to a television when out on the road, are there any drawbacks to using a USB-C to hdmi cable over a dedicated hdmi cable into a USB-C/hdmi dongle.

 

The reason I ask is the dongle is cumbersome, an additional item to carry and potentially to fail, and when looking at ‘better brands’, the dongle is invariably many times more expensive than a straightforward cable.

 

I’ve checked the specs for the cable I’m looking at on Amazon (UNI USB-C to hdmi) and the numbers all seem good (supports up to 4k@60hz which is more than sufficient for me). I’m just not sure if I’m missing something incredibly obvious that would mean it’s better I bite the bullet and buy an hdmi dongle.

Thanks  

 

Scott

Hello and welcome!

 

As long as it meets the needed use case I'll generally prefer a cable over a dongle for no other reason than less points of failure. A cable has two connections whereas a dongle will have four in the total link. If all components are high quality it probably won't make a difference, but with cheaper dongles it might.

[LDNmilsco]

3 minutes ago, Darpyface said:

It's basically the same, you might get a tiny bit more latency but it doesn't really matter either will work fine.

More latency with or without the dongle?

[LDNmilsco]

1 minute ago, RAS_3885 said:

Hello and welcome!

 

As long as it meets the needed use case I'll generally prefer a cable over a dongle for no other reason than less points of failure. A cable has two connections whereas a dongle will have four in the total link. If all components are high quality it probably won't make a difference, but with cheaper dongles it might.

My primary motivation to not go the dongle route is additional (and potentially unnecessary) points of failure.

 

Thanks! Good to know my reasoning wasn’t on the wrong track.

[Guest]

23 minutes ago, LDNmilsco said:

More latency with or without the dongle?

Adding more things it has to go through increases latency, but it'll be less than a millisecond.

[LDNmilsco]

8 minutes ago, Darpyface said:

Adding more things it has to go through increases latency, but it'll be less than a millisecond.

Understood, thanks!

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, LDNmilsco said:

In relation to connecting a laptop to a television when out on the road, are there any drawbacks to using a USB-C to hdmi cable over a dedicated hdmi cable into a USB-C/hdmi dongle.

 

 

No such animal. You either have active cables/dongles, or you have passive ones. Active vs Passive comes up in the Displayport tech, not HDMI. Active devices actually convert the signal within their "dongle" So if you plug in a USB-C device that is "HDMI" and has HDMI on the other end, it's a "HDMI" cable, not a USB-C to Displayport to HDMI cable. Passive devices rely on the video adapter to do this conversion, so if you buy a DP to DP cable, but need a dongle to convert from HDMI to DP, then a passive adapter won't work.

 

So to answer the question, no, because there is a HDMI over USB-C spec.

Quote

Yes, this is an HDMI cable, in this case a USB Type-C to HDMI cable. The cable maintains the current cable names including: Standard HDMI Cable, Standard HDMI Cable with Ethernet, High Speed HDMI Cable and High Speed HDMI Cable with Ethernet.

Keep in mind that USB-C to HDMI only gaurantees HDMI 1.4b, not 2.0, so 4Kp60 might not be possible if your device doesn't support HDMI 2.0 over USB-C.

[JZStudios]

I'm using dongles from displayport to HDMI just so I can use standard HDMI cables. I did have DP to HDMI cables, which worked but ended up being to short. Same thing either way, I just think it's easier to have a standard cable instead of a specialized one.