It shouldn’t be too expensive, and it should work reliably without getting too hot. The best USB-C hub is one that gives you access to all the ports you need, and is small and light enough to easily keep in your bag at all times. That means that all those super powerful $300 Thunderbolt 3 hubs are out.
To be clear, we’re only looking at a very specific subset of USB-C hubs here - for the sake of this comparison, they’ve got to provide the option to continue to charge your laptop through a pass-through power port, and they can’t need their own separate power supply. Which means if you’ve got a USB-C laptop like Apple’s MacBook Pros or Dell’s latest XPS 13, and you want to get your old ports back - things like regular USB, HDMI, Ethernet, headphone jacks, DisplayPort, MicroSD, and SD card slots - you’re going to need a USB-C hub. Sure, one day maybe we’ll get to the place where every cable, every gadget, and every screen uses the next generation connector specification but we’re nowhere near that today.
Despite all of its promise for a better future, the reality of living with USB Type-C is kind of a nightmare.
