Honestly those cheap dongles are a total trap. I went through three of them before I realized they just cant handle the heat of a dual monitor setup plus charging. If you really want that buy it once peace of mind, you should probably look at a proper powered docking station rather than a tiny travel hub. I have been using the Anker 575 USB-C Docking Station 13-in-1 for about a year now and it hasn't skipped a beat. It handles my 85W charging perfectly and the ethernet is way more stable than my previous setup. It handles multiple displays well, though for dual 4K you might need to check your laptop bandwidth. Its a solid choice for under 200 bucks usually and feels much more premium than those plastic adapters. If you have a bit more budget and want the absolute gold standard, the CalDigit TS4 Thunderbolt 4 Dock is basically the king of reliability. Its expensive but it solves every issue you mentioned. No flickering, stays cool, and handles 98W power delivery. It is a beast and honestly the last dock you would ever need to buy. A few tips for whatever you buy:

• Make sure your laptops USB-C port actually supports DP Alt Mode or Thunderbolt.
• Use the high quality cable that comes with the dock, dont swap it for a cheap one.
• If the hub gets warm, try to keep it in a spot with decent airflow. Good luck with the new setup, it definitely makes working from home less of a headache when stuff actually stays connected.

If you want something that actually lasts without spending a fortune, check out the Anker 565 USB-C Hub 11-in-1. It handles 4k 60hz and has 100w pass-through for charging. I've been using it for months without any of those annoying disconnects or flickering you mentioned. Just make sure you use a solid power brick with it to keep everything stable since it doesnt come with one!

I'd suggest being a bit cautious about assuming a bigger price tag solves everything tbh. High-end setups fail just as spectacularly as the cheap ones sometimes. It actually reminds me of when my buddy Dave tried to build his ultimate command center last summer.

• He bought this supposedly bulletproof dock that cost way too much money.
• Every time his fridge kicked on in the next room, his second monitor would just black out for five seconds.
• The thing got so hot it actually warped the finish on his mahogany desk. Dave spent weeks troubleshooting cables and drivers and even called an electrician to check his wall outlets. It was a whole ordeal that basically consumed his entire month of July. Last I heard he just gave up and started using two separate laptops instead of trying to make one hub do all the heavy lifting... just goes to show you never really know until you plug it in.

Just catching up on this thread and man, I feel your pain. I went through a whole graveyard of those little aluminum dongles before I figured out what was actually going wrong. Most of these hubs try to do way too much without their own power supply, which is basically a recipe for disaster. The biggest mistake I made early on was thinking a travel hub could handle a full home office setup. When you start pushing 4K at 60Hz and trying to shove 85W of power through a tiny piece of metal, the heat is incredible. I actually had one hub get so hot it started smelling like burnt plastic... definitely not something you want near your expensive laptop. It is honestly a fire hazard at that point. You really gotta watch out for phantom specs too. A lot of these hubs claim 4K 60Hz but only if you drop the resolution on the second screen or use a specific port. It is all about the bandwidth limit of the USB-C port itself. If you are seeing flickering, it is usually because the controller is throttled or the cable isnt shielded well enough. Tbh, if you are doing dual monitors, you really need to look for something that has its own dedicated brick that plugs into the wall. Relying on the laptop to power the hub and all your peripherals while the hub is trying to charge the laptop is just asking for those random disconnects. A few things I learned to avoid:

• Hubs that dont have an external power source
• Units with short, non-detachable cables that strain the port
• Cheap controllers that cant handle DisplayStream Compression It took me three fried hubs to realize that passive hubs are just for occasional use, not for an 8-hour workday.