The standard M1 and M2 chips in Apple’s recent MacBooks are powerful but have a major limitation: unlike Intel-based Macs, they don’t support more than one external display. The smarter M1 Pro and M1 Max chips do support multiple displays. A USB-C port on your laptop can either run at 5Gbps or 10Gbps, with the latter being almost ubiquitous these days. That’s plenty of bandwidth for a printer, a mouse, a keyboard, or a hard drive, even all at once. Products like displays, ethernet, and high-speed SSDs gobble up that bandwidth, however. Also included are an SD card reader (that can support a microSD card with an adapter). This is rated at UHS-I (104MBps) so not the fastest but speedier than some other hubs tested here offer.

It weighs just 36g and measures 2.8-x-1.25-x-0.3in (72-x-32-x-8mm), making it the smallest USB-C iPad hub we have tested.If you need a splitter then buy an active hub. I cannot find any that advertise multiple PD outputs (only pass through for a laptop) and this would likely need a lot of expensive power conversion to handle, see the rest of my answer below.

Alongside the HDMI are three 5Gbps USB-A ports (slightly underpowered at just 4.5W) and Gigabit Ethernet for wired Internet access. The iPad magnetically attaches in either portrait or landscape mode and will even fast-charge your iPhone (7.5W) and AirPods (5W) at its base; you can also add an optional Apple Watch charging module for the full Apple experience.Whilst USB-C cables are generally designed for higher current I still advise using short power cable to the Pi where possible to reduce voltage drop. Image showing the aforementioned USB-C splitter that I desire but where only one port is for charging and the other is for data/audio: Even if all you plugged in were phones then after the first phone then all devices would see an out-of-specification USB voltage which they did not negotiate and may refuse to work at all. Lasuney’s 10-in-1 hub (two USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports, two HDMI 1.2 ports (4K@30Hz), DisplayPort gigabit ethernet, microSD/SD, USB-C power input) offers a lot for your money, including an unusual mix of not one, but two HDMI ports, and even a DisplayPort. Thanks to ethernet support, the hub can replace many of your wired connections. Power input is rated at 100W in, with about 87W available to the laptop.