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If you have a MacBook Pro or any other modern laptop with USB-C, it seems like you've had to simultaneously begin a journey in finding adapters. USB 3.0, HDMI, SD Card readers, the modern trend of all USB-C all the time might make manufacturing easier, but it sure doesn't simplify our life as users.
Enter the terrific Uni Rugged USB-C Hub and Dock devices. Perfect for any MacBook and MacBook Pro owner, they offer a tiny and flexible solution to all your connectivity woes, either the 6-in-1 Hub or the 8-in-1 Dock. Better yet, they're currently on Kickstarter so if you move quickly, you can get quite a deal on these game changing devices.
Tech expert Dave Taylor of https://www.AskDaveTaylor.com/ tested out both the smaller Hub and the larger Dock with his Retina TouchBar MacBook Pro and a variety of peripherals and found them definite keepers for any tech person.
On Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/uniaccessories/uni-the-first-rugged-usb-c-dock-and-hub
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USB-C docks that can fit in your pocket? Let's have a look
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Dave Taylor here and I'm looking at these. These are the Uni Rugged USB-C Hub and Dock
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And the difference between them is size but the size is because the bigger guy
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has more ports. That makes sense. Let's start with a little one. So the hub is nice. It's a
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six-in-one connector and you can actually use it with the little rubber case on it or you can pop
0:35
it off. Or you can even use a blue one instead of a gray one. Either way. Or you can just use it
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just like this. It's super small. Very nice piece of engineering. On one end is USB-C and it comes
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with a little USB-C to USB-C connector. So we're good to go. Excuse me. And then on one side we
0:55
have USB 3.0 SD card and micro SD card reader. And on the other side we have a USB-C pass-through
1:05
power plug. So it's not a full USB-C. You can't plug in a hard drive or something. And USB-3 where
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you can plug in a hard drive. And HDMI. So best way to demonstrate something is to plug things in
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right? So let's plug things in. So the first thing we're going to plug in is a hard drive on one of
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the USB plugs. I'm going to charge a digital watch on another one of the USB 3.0. Let's see
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And then we're going to put pass-through power. So we're going to need the power from here to go
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through and actually power my MacBook Pro while everything else is going on. And then finally
1:43
HDMI which we'll use to drive this little LG monitor. So as you can see there's a lot
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plugged in. Let me actually just close the screen here. There's a lot plugged into this little
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octopus here. So let's go ahead and plug it into my MacBook Pro and see what happens
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Now here's something you really need to know. On MacBook Pros in particular, the left side USB-C
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and the right side USB-C are not the same. If you want to use an external monitor, you have to use
2:11
the right side. Everyone who's done this has probably gone through that confusion and figured
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it out and said, oh that's strange. Okay I get it. So no difference with this. If I want to use this to
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power the external monitor, I'm going to have to use one of the right side USB-C plugs. So I'll
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plug it in. We got all this crazy wiring going on. It's a bit more than a bit confusing but let's see
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what happens. So there. Boom. Second monitor showed up. So that's HDMI. Let me close this a little bit
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and then this hard drive is actually shown here. So if I go over here and double click
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you can see that it opens up and things move pretty darn quickly here. I'm actually running
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a speed test. You can actually check the specs out on their website and let's see what else. And how
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is the watch doing? And this watch is charging. I can show you the screen but I know it's going to
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just look like a little black circle. Okay now that works. And finally let's look on the Mac
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itself and actually you can see here. So the Mac is also charging. So this little tiny hub is doing
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everything I'm pushing on it all at the same time. And you know what? Let's go ahead and try out a
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little bit on the hard drive because that's always one that's interesting to see how it works. So
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if we go into this folder, let's see if we can find a nice big file. Here's one that's 700 megabytes
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and I'm going to just drag it onto my desktop and we'll see how long that takes. There's a progress
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bar somewhere. Oh it is on this screen. I'll put it on here. Oh it's already done. So that was 700
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megabytes and it was so fast that I didn't even have a chance to move the progress bar onto the
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second screen. That's not bad. Now let's go ahead and unplug this and try the bigger one which is
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the dock. So first thing I want to do is I want to eject the disk because generally you don't want
4:09
to just unplug hard drives. That's not really good hard drive karma. So that's unplugged and now we
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can actually unplug everything and I'm going to just take this whole thing apart. Let's see
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I've got a lot of stuff going on and I just lost the HDMI cable. We'll find that in a sec
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So this is the hub. This is the 6-in-1 hub. Now we're going to switch to this dock which is an
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8-in-1 and the dock similarly has the rubber that you can take off if you want. If you want something
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a little more modest or you can put it in gray and it comes with a little bit longer USB-C to USB-C
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connection. So that's pretty handy. So you can again plug it into one end and now what you gain
4:58
is you gain another HDMI 3.0 plug and you gain an ethernet plug. So let me give you some specs
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here. So it has the USB-C pass-through. It has HDMI and the HDMI is actually what's known as
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HDMI 1.4. So it can drive a 4k monitor but only at 30 hertz. So it's not quite HDMI 2.0 level
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but for 99% of people that's probably fine. And then we have ethernet and it's a thousand megabits
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per second ethernet. So it's fast ethernet and then USB 3.0 and then on the other side we have the SD
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card, micro SD card and then two more USB plugs. So all of that's very nice. Nothing on the end and
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this one's much heavier at three and a half ounces. So you know you can probably manage this. So let's
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go ahead and plug things in again and let's start by me recovering that HDMI cable. Let's see it's
6:01
back here somewhere. Here we go. I tend to use long cables so it takes a little effort. There we go
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So we have HDMI. I will plug that into the HDMI port. Then we will do pass-through USB-C power
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and then I will plug in the hard drive also on the same side and I don't have any ethernet to test
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I really haven't used hard ethernet wires in a while and then we'll just plug in that watch to
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charge again. So it's basically same setup we did with the smaller hub and this time I will again
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plug it into the right hand side of the MacBook and let's see what happens when I turn it on
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Hopefully everything will work. I see this. The screens come up and underneath here you can see
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there's that external hard drive and I can open it up and we can again actually this time maybe we
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can copy a nice big file onto it. So let's I'll just move it over here so it's still on my
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MacBook's hard drive and now I'm going to copy it onto the external hard drive which is connected
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via the Uni-Dock. Okay you follow all that? So all I have to do is just drag and drop and
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there it is and so this one's going a little bit slower. You can see the progress bar there
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and it's taking oh I don't know maybe 15 seconds 10 seconds is what it estimates
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and write is always slower than read that's just the nature of hard drives so that's nothing new
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or surprising to me. Now one of the things I want to say about the dock is they did a really nice
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job of thinking about which port should be on which side because it's designed so that on one side
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the HDMI, the Ethernet, the USB-C pass through all of that is stuff that you generally are going to
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plug in and leave and then on the other side are the kind of ports for things that you will unplug
8:04
and plug and little SD cards you might put in and take out so they've really sort of thought through
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having what they call their stationary side and then the side that you'll be using a lot so that
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makes it really nice and it becomes easy then to have it just sort of tucked on the back of your
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desk and while it comes with really short USB-C cables you could use a longer one so that's easy
8:25
enough. Okay so let me tell you just a little bit more about it is that this is the 10 centimeter
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I'm going to just go ahead and close this and this stays open because of how I have my Mac configured
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so if I had a wireless keyboard I could do all this and you'd never even know I had a Macbook
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in the middle of it how about that. So 10 centimeters this one is 20 centimeters long
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and this is all on Kickstarter right now and they are rocking it on Kickstarter so they have a goal
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of $15,000 of sold units and they are just a smidge under $30,000 right now by the time you check it
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out they'll probably have hit 2x on their goal that's really nice that's actually a very impressive
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accomplishment and you know the rubber and stuff yeah whatever I don't know that I like those
9:11
although it's nice to have something that helps your little device or little dock or port or hub
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be a little bit more rugged so there's that. So let's talk about prices first off the little guy
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the one I really like because it's so small and it's so light this one the hub 6-in-1 hub
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is actually running for oh wait a minute before we get to price if I can ask go ahead and click
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on that subscribe button and subscribe to my channel really appreciate when you do that and
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you tell me isn't this nicer than having five or six crazy little dongles in your computer bag or
9:47
in your desk one of these solves all those problems very very nice piece of engineering
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so now the hub the 6-in-1 hub manufacturer suggested retail price MSRP this will be going
10:00
for 69 bucks but right now early bird on Kickstarter you can get it for $39. 39 bucks is cheaper than
10:09
just getting the USB-C to HDMI adapter so you know instead of buying that one super expensive cable
10:15
from Apple solve all your problems in one little dock that's nice now if you want the bigger one
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and I'm not going to unplug everything because it's crazy right it's crazy the bigger one is
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the dock and the dock is an 8-in-1 and the dock actually has an MSRP of $95 but right now on
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Kickstarter you can pick it up for 55 bucks and one of the things that's really nice is they
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actually have the pair you can buy it as a pair and they have some really nice pricing on that too
10:44
so I think Uni has a real home run here these are really nice and I am definitely just going to
10:49
have this one permanently in my computer bag because I'm always hunting for ways to plug in
10:54
different devices or different peripherals or just like get to a USB 3 plug you know Apple could have
11:01
actually left some of those things on the MacBook Pro and on its latest generation of other devices
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but no they didn't do that so it's up to us to solve the problem ourselves and this is a very
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elegant solution so I suggest you check out Kickstarter while you can I am really glad to
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have these to add to my arsenal of connectivity and that means I will catch you in my next video
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