I’m in the market for a new laptop to replace my Samsung Book 9 Plus. My main desire is easy docking, ideally a single Thunderbolt 3 connection which supports enough Power Delivery to charge the laptop, and I would like to run dual 4K displays at 60hz. And of course audio and ethernet.
Now here’s the tricky part, My monitors are actually 40" Samsung 4K displays with HDMI 2.0.
I saw the page for Plugable TBT3-UDV. my thinking is I could use the built in DP++ port along with an active Displayport to HDMI adapter. That should get my main display running at 4K60.
Now for the second display. Would I have to go Thunderbolt 3 from the Plugable to Display Port and Active Display port adapter to HDMI. That’s a lot of adapters.
Thanks for posting. We generally avoid making specific system recommendations, but I’ll certainly be glad to provide some feedback to your proposed setup.
The TBT3-UDV should be a good fit for host-charging and dual 4K@60Hz, generally speaking.
However, whether or not it will support two displays will depend on the host system it is attached to. This is because of decisions the system manufacturer has to make regarding motherboard design and layout, and how many video links are routed to the Thunderbolt 3 port. And as you can imagine, it can be really difficult to find this information out from system manufacturers given the complexity.
Gtrusted.com is doing a good job noting the number of supported displays on some Thunderbolt 3 systems which they test: http://gtrusted.com/
The Dell XPS series does support two displays, as do HP’s Thunderbolt 3 systems. But the Razer systems vary from model to model. We have a Razer Blade Stealth system here for testing and it only supports a single display over Thunderbolt 3.
So, assuming you choose a new laptop which supports two video outputs:
For Display #1, you’re correct that DP->HDMI 2.0 Active Adapter is the best choice.
For Display #2, you’ll want to use a USB-C “Alternate Mode” adapter from the second Thunderbolt 3 port on the dock. No need to convert from USB-C->DP->HDMI – so one less adapter than you suspected: plugable.com/products/usbc-hdmi
Lots of complex details here, but hope this helps clarify a bit.