Was excited to replace my TOBENONE dock that no longer was allowing ethernet connection to my 2021 M1Max Macbook Pro. Everything worked perfect and as expected for a day.
Day 2 - hdmi port no longer connected to either of my external monitors. Workaround - I still had one monitor connected to one of the TB4 ports via the provided adaptor and connected the other to the hdmi port built in to my macbook (dissapointed I had to connect directly to my macbook as that was one of the reasons for getting the dock, but hey…everything worked)
Day 5 - Monday morning after having hooked up the doc Friday afternoon. There was a notification on my Mac that one of the external drives (connected to the TB4 port on back) was improperly ejected. To reconnect the external drive I tried to “mount via disk utility in MacOS” it was not showing, I had to reboot Mac and dock to get it to connect again. Again all fine for a few days (except of course the hdmi port on the doc still didn’t work…bummer)
Day 8 - Went to use my Mac Thursday morning, and everything was frozen. I finally realized I could still navigate the mac via the Macs touchpad and keyboard. I noticed a message on the screen that a usb device was consuming too much power and to disconnect the device. I removed all the items connected to any of the usb ports; logitech camera, mouse, keyboard, both external drives. I plugged all back in, but nothing responded. After rebooting the mac and the dock, everything worked again. Except - you guessed it - the hdmi port still did not…plugged back into macbook again.
Day 11 - Noticed I could not connect to my Macbook via ipad using SMB. Went to the macbook and noticed my Deco until beside my work desk was blinking red. I thought maybe I had a new issue not related to the dock. After triaging my Deco system, nothing was wrong. I got a notification through my deco app that my macbook had joined the network. In going into the app to find my macbook device it did not show under the devices connected as “wired”, then suddenly it did show as wired and another in app notification that it connected to my network. I went to setting in the Deco app and flagged my macbook wired connection and wifi connection for connect and disconnect notifications. Since then I get notifications that my macbook, connected through the dock of course disconnects and reconnects to my network on average twice every hour, all day every day.
I followed instructions on amazon to self trouble shoot and powered off the dock via power button, disconnected TB4 from mac, then disconnected power from dock. Waited about 20 minutes, plugged TB4 back in, plugged power back in. All worked as expected (except still no hdmi port) for about 2 hours. Then disconnect and reconnect commenced again.
Amazon support gave me a link to contact seller and instruction to email seller through the Amazon web page. Amazon advised that Plugable would send me a new unit in 1-3 days and I would not have to worry about returning the old device.
I noticed I had new mail in my gmail app. It was an automated response from Plugable that they will respond within 48 hours, but if this is regarding a defective item to reach out via the Plugable website. So here I am. Please find my message to you via the Amazon site and this thread to remedy the very faulty product.
I guess am currently doubtful that this expensive of a device would break so quickly and that a replacement of the exact same item will truly work and remdey the situation. But I guess I will give it a go if that is what Plugable wants to do. However, if all the ports (including the hdmi) are not working properly and consistently then I expect a solution that involves a comparable or better dock or compensation for the original and lost time from my work responsibilities and personal time triaging and troubleshooting the device to be able to minimally pass as workable for short periods of time to get work done.
Thank you.