Need help with a one plug usb c hub solution

7mtyler · January 8, 2022

Hello everyone!

I use my personal laptop (razer book 13) as my work computer. Basically I have a USB hub that connects the laptop to a monitor through HDMI, Ethernet, power, and speakers.

I wanted a seamless one plug setup that would work flawlessly, but it has not worked out so well.

Problems I've had:

-power delivery is iffy. It works but I have to unplug the power cord from the hub and plug it back in all the time for the computer to recognize it and start charging.

-the headphone jack on the USB hub was noisy with interference. I added a USB to headphone jack to the hub instead and this works better but my laptop often doesn't automatically switch to it and I have to manually switch to it pretty often.

-sometimes it just doesn't want to connect to the monitor and I have to restart for it to work again.

-the laptop does not recognize a USB wireless mouse/keyboard combo when plugged into the hub.

-biggest problem here... The laptop just seems to take for ever to wake up when plugged into this setup. Sometimes it seems to be completely unresponsive and the power button needs to be held down and forced to restart before everything comes to life.

I guess my question is this. Do you think my hub may be faulty, or am I just asking too much of one single port? My hub is some off brand thing I found on Amazon, so maybe if I bought something more expensive from a better brand it would work better?

Let me know any thoughts you have!

Thank you.

GhostRoadieBL · January 8, 2022

-power delivery is iffy - totally normal for many USB hubs, this seems to be linked to windows recognizing USB-C with and without power and indicate charging or not. There are some that even had separate power and data USB-Cs to get around this because it's always been janky.

-the headphone jack on the USB hub was noisy with interference - again, sadly normal for 90% of the hubs, you can set the USB headphone connection to be "default device" which should solve the need to switch each time it's connected. This can be done in the Sound Control Panel (from sound settings -> sound control panel -> 'highlight the device' -> "set as default")

-sometimes it just doesn't want to connect to the monitor + a USB wireless mouse/keyboard - keeping your monitor and mouse/keyboard off as you plug in the hub, then turning them on should cause this to be less common. This is also windows being weird about attaching many devices through a single interface, too many signals telling the OS a new device is connected on the interface which the OS then ignores but doesn't clear so trying again doesn't do anything.

- taking forever to wake up - that's the worst one for sure, I usually unplug my hub before waking the computer just so it's not bogged down by windows being confused by all the devices being woken up and needing attention all at once.

this doesn't seem to be a brand or price thing, I've tried almost a dozen hubs from the included one to $300 lightning ones and they all seem to have their own quirks, it's only common factor is windows being weird with devices. Even as bad as corrupting USB drives when more than one is in the hub and waking up the laptop connected to them with folders open.