I agree, wireless is overrated in “desktop” situations.
One solution that I hope more monitor manufacturers would follow is the recent Dell “hub” monitors with built-in Ethernet (RJ-45), USB-C, downstream power, USB-A, etc.
I'd take a simple monitor and an external hub, in place of a monitor+hub integration, any day of the week. We put two things one inside the other and call it progress, but that's less maintainable, sometimes less portable, more expensive, and, most importantly, less modular.
Attach the hub to your monitor's VESA mount points and you gain a lot of long-term flexibility at the cost of a single short wire that'll be hidden behind your monitor. Otherwise functionally identical to an integrated hub/monitor, but you can upgrade or replace the individual components on their own schedule.
A good monitor can last through generations of computer hardware, it doesn't make sense to combine directly with other components that have much shorter lifespans.
Isn't it the same number of wires, since you still need to run a usb cable from the computer to the monitor? So then really all you get is not needing a separate box for the hub. That's admittedly nice -- I have a Dell monitor with usb ports and I use it, mostly because I'm not going to buy a standalone hub when I don't need it -- but if the monitor had a way to mount the external hub on the back, I think that would be the best of both worlds.
One cable rather than two. Some monitors have integrated USB hubs, but you need to connect a separate USB-A to USB-B cable, in addition to HDMI/DVI/VGA. Newer, high-end monitors will transmit video and USB over a single USB-C cable, as well as power in the other direction (to charge a laptop).
Apple has been doing this since the advent of Thunderbolt, and I have to believe it was one of the reasons they wanted it and then pushed toward USB-C.
With MiniDP and MagSafe it was nice but clunky; with USB-C and USB PD it’s great. I know some people miss the old clicky docks, but I agree with you that the monitor + single cable is a really good solution.
Honestly for a laptop I'd prefer the following setup:
An E-GPU enclosure, which is also the power supply, has an ethernet port, and provides some USB ports for any devices you always leave at the desk.
You connect it to the laptop with a single thunderbolt power-delivery type-c cable.
The monitor(s) are connected to the enclosure with type-c displayport with power delivery.
Thus you have only a max of two cables connected to the wall: power cable for E-GPU dock and ethernet. This is fairly similar to that monitor concept except that the monitors docking station is broken out as a separate component.
In an ideal world, with plenty of funding, I've always wanted to take that a step further and implement a remote virtualized workstation. With just 2.5Gbps from NBase-T and 802.3bt for power and VESA display stream compression you could hypothetically power a monitor from a single cat5e cable as well as output full 1080p 60Hz video ("visually lossless"), supply power and data for USB, maybe even a passthrough 802.3af ethernet port for an ip phone.
You could take that even further by adding in a custom SPICE-like display protocol and only send rectangular regions of changed pixels and translation commands to shift a region of pixels around (scrolling, moving a window, etc). Given it's all virtualized instead of traditional ip phones you could go with dumb USB desk phones and route that USB device to a single PBX and build something akin to an old school PBX where the phones are more or less just dumb terminals. Rather than dealing with the headaches of setting up BLFs, dial plans on the phone vs. PBX, call forwarding and DND on PBX and phones, VM access, Hotdesking setups, etc it's all just a bunch of specialized HIDs hooked up to a VM. Need HA? Move the USB devices on failover to a separate VM.
It'd have all the benefits of thin clients with significantly less drawbacks. Need dual monitors? No need to replace your bargain basement thin client with one that supports dual monitors, just pull up another monitor, hookup to the same seat on the servers and done. You could sell a deluxe version with dual inputs so that each display is connected to two independent switches so if one bites the dust it doesn't take down 48 employees at a time.
> HDBaseT, promoted and advanced by the HDBaseT Alliance, is a consumer electronic (CE) and commercial connectivity standard for transmission of uncompressed high-definition video (HD), audio, power, home networking, Ethernet, USB, and some control signals, over a common category cable (Cat5e or above) using the same 8P8C modular connectors used by Ethernet.
Eh, my “cheap” TRENDNet stip+crimp tool does the job just fine. I’m not a heavy user, but I’ve done well over 50 terminations with it and every time I’ve had an issue it’s due to myself doing a shitty job inserting the wires into the connector.
HDBaseT has somewhat consolidated the HDMI over twisted pair market, so you do have one more standard, but it replaces a dozen non-standards in the field.
Did this for years with my ThunderBolt display, and have been doing it since 2015 with my LG 4K display.
The only bad thing is that because the LG is USB-C and not TB3, I only get USB 2.0 speeds out of it. I have a pair of USB-C to USB-A adapters that let me connect ethernet and my phone or other device to charge.
I currently use a Dell WD15 with my Dell laptop and I love it. Only single cable to plug in which drives my wired lan, 2 screens, power, mouse and keyboard.
This monitor with it essentially built in looks great, would remove all the following from my desk:
- the dock
- the power brick for the dock
- One of the DP cables
- one of the screen USB cables
One solution that I hope more monitor manufacturers would follow is the recent Dell “hub” monitors with built-in Ethernet (RJ-45), USB-C, downstream power, USB-A, etc.
https://www.dell.com/lt/business/p/dell-u2421he-monitor/pd
Only one cable to connect.