This is the brand new Thunderbolt 4 Element hub from caldigit.
This is the first 8 port thunderbolt hub so lets take a look at it…..
Hey, Im Jerry and caldigit sent me this new hub to take a look at and this is
one of my favorite accessories for my new M1 MacBooks. …Just to be clear,
Caldigit did send me this hub to make a video but they are not paying me for
this video and have not reviewed this video…so with that out of the way, what is this thing?
This is an 8 port thunderbolt 4 hub from caldigit called the element hub.
The hub is pretty compact at about 4.5 x 3 inches. On the front you have 4 USb-A ports which
can run at up to 10gbps which of course is super fast on its own and can run
most external SSDs at full speed, like this Samsung T7 or Caldigit Tuff nano……
On the back there are 3 Thunderbolt 4 ports and a power port which powers both the hub and whatever
device you connect it to. On the side is the host connection port for connecting to your computer.
Just to be clear, when I say Thunderbolt 4 that means this hub will work with any
computer or tablet that has a USB-C connection. Thunderbolt 4 covers Thunderbolt 3, USB4 and USBC
and the hub will adpate to whatever your computer can handle. So if you computer
has Thunderbolt 4, Thunderbolt 3, or USB4 you will get up to 40gbps
and if you have USB-c gen 1 or gen 2 you will get 5 or 10gbps, depending on the device.
Ive been using this Element Hub for the last few weeks with my M1 MacBook Pro,
16” MacBook Pro, and a surface go and it works great will all of those laptops. I have also
tested it with my iPad Pro to connect a display and external hard drives. Using a
Thunderbolt SSD like the Samsung X5, I can get over 2500 MBps.
The Element Hub is reversible so you can use it on either side of your computer as needed
no matter which side your ports are on. Caldigit includes rubber feet so that the hub will stay put
and the power and thunderbolt cables will stay in the back pointed away from you. The included
Thunderbolt 4 cable is also a good length so you can keep the hub out of the way or even use
it with a desktop computer that is further back or behind your desk….
This hub will provide up to 60 watts of power for your laptop or tablet when connected. And
unlike some other hubs you will not lose any of that 60 watts when you plug in external drives or
accessories so you always will get a constant 60 watts output to your computer. Even if you connect
a bunch of hard drives, a display, and a phone, the M1 MacBook Pro will still get all the power
it needs….But even better, you can use this hub for charging your phone, smart watch or other USB
powered items even when you are not connected to a computer with its offline charging capability.
Now, when it comes to Displays you can absoloutly pass displays thorugh this Element hub. If you
have a display with a thunderbolt or USB-C, you can just connect it directly to the element hub
and you can get a single 5, 6 or 8k display when connected this way or 2 4k displays. If you have
displayport or hdmi you can connect up to two 4k displays using adapters like these guys….Display
support does depend on the computer and OS but if you have an Intel Mac or PC with thunderbolt
you should be able to run 2 4k displays at 60hz. An M1 mac can only push a single display through
thunderbolt at this time and Windows PCs are going to depend on what hardware they have.
The last thing to mention about this thunderbolt 4 hub is that it is thunderbolt so you can daisy
chain items as needed. You could connect something like a thunderbolt storage array and then a
display on the same output from the hub. You could also connect an EGPU to the computer then
the hub downstream. The 8 ports on the element hub really just give you the versatility to
connect a huge amount of devices, something that I think a lot of people have been waiting for,
especially on the Mac side. And if you already have a dock that works well like
the caldigit ts3 + you can add the element hub to increase the amount of thunderbolt and USB ports.
Overall, I think this is the thunderbolt hub that people have been waiting for. Up until now
thunderbolt docks were limited to 2 thunderbolt ports and the Element hub has 4, plus the
4 10gbps usb-a ports. You can connect pretty much any accessory you need to through this hub, and it
will fully power almost any laptop and whatever devices you connect to it. If you have multiple
displays, external drives or other things that you need to connect regularly to a desktop, laptop,
or usbc tablet, this Element hub could solve all your issues. Now if you do have something like the
16” MacBook Pro and need something that outputs 94 watts of power then you should also check out my
overview of the USB-C HDMI dock right over here. And if you need more ports add the Element hub
to it. Hit the thumb s up if you liked it, hit subscribe if you want and Ill see you next time.