Noobie question on docking stations - cable length (or lack thereof)

[MrZaed]

I've been looking for a way to keep all the clutter off my desk and I thought I could connect all my peripherals to a docking station, leave it under the desk and then just have the USB C cable come crawling up to have one cable show and connect. However I've seen that practically all Docking stations avaialble have a teeny tiny short cable that goes up to the computer.  My issue is that one of my laptops has the USB C jack on the left side and the other one on the right side. Sooo... I need to keep my current docking station on top of my desk and have enough of the cables available to move it to either side (not exactly tidy).  With one excepction by JSAUX, all docking stations have the same issue. Is there a technical reason behind this? Would the JSAUX (JSAUX Docking Station, 12 in 1 USB-C on AMZ) be a good option? any alternatives? Thanks in advance

[OddOod]

Welcome to the forums!
Most of them have short cables for one of two reasons: Either they have found that most people want a short cable to reduce clutter (see most recent Cable Doctor ep where they mention that a lot of management is just having the right length cord), or to improve signal integrity given that thunderbolt passive cables *max out* at 2m, with reliable cables being only 0.5m

If you're not using the laptop screen, you could just put one laptop upside down...
 

[Senzelian]

If we're talking about =< 20Gbit USB docking stations, you can easily get a longer cable and shouldn't run into any issues.

 

But if we're talking about =>Y40Gbit USB or Thunderbolt 3/4, then you'll likely run into signaling issues at lengths of over 50cm. (In most cases 1 meter is also fine). There are good-quality Thunderbolt 3/4 cables out there that can run up to 2 meters long, but even then, you could occasionally run into issues.

So max length I recommend:

10Gbit = 5 Meters

20Gbit = 2 Meters

40Gbit = 1 Meter

 

 

 

[manikyath]

hp's usb-c docks have a 1 meter cable, i dont know how far you want to put the dock, but i presume that should suffice?