This was more difficult to find and more confusing than I anticipated. I have a new MBP M2 Max. I want to replace my current desktop PC with it.

I use 3 monitors, 2xHD monitors that only have HDMI ports on them, and 1 old 2560x1600 DVI monitor. I want to buy a dock so I can easily plug the laptop in to as few things as possible, ideally even only plugging it in to one thing if possible. I have found USB-C to to DVI-dual link connectors online and I know one can buy USB-C to HDMI adaptors (I’m unclear if I can get TB4 to HDMI adaptors). I also use one of the old apple USB keyboards that had a USB 1.0 hub on it for connecting a mouse which I would definitely want connected via a dock in conjunction with the monitors and also speakers connected via 3.5mm jack. I want a dock specifically so that as soon as I plug the laptop in, it functions just like using a desktop and I’m not needing to hook each of these things up individually every time I’d be operating the laptop in a closed configuration most if not all of the time when at home at my desk.

Ideally then I could find a dock that will connect to a TB4 port and will have either HDMI or Displayport ports on it that I can connect the monitors to, or additional TB4 ports that I can hook the monitors up to via adaptors. I’d also ideally then be able to hook up some fast storage to such a dock but that’s where I get a bit confused about how the bandwidth situation works and how resources are divided up and how that influences what dock to buy. This is a slightly less important requirement because I probably won’t be hooking up storage all the time and when I do, I don’t mind using up one of the remaining TB4 ports on the MBP for that, but for convenience sake it sure would be nice if I could hook a USB-C gen 2 drive or TB4 drive to the dock while it’s connected to the 3 monitors, just don’t know how possible that is.

Something else that’s confusing me is, I was looking at the Sonnet Echo 11 and it was mentioned somewhere in a tech specs document that you could plug monitors in to it’s TB4 ports with active adaptors. I remember having to make such a distinction a long time ago back when DVI was still a thing, that in order to use the full resolution of a DVI device one needed an active vs passive adaptor to actively convert the signal and that the active variant was much more expensive and contained powered circuitry. This irks me, because if that’s what they’re talking about here with HDMI to USB-C connectors plugging in to those TB4 ports on the dock it’d be very disappointing because I thought if one shells out a bunch of cash for a fairly chonky dock that it would take care of any such conversions and the idea of having to spend a whole bunch more money to get the “active” adaptors for each monitor in order to connect to the dock that I was hoping would be my adaptor is a bit galling.