Why are there no USB-C only “hubs”?

Question

It's been several years since the USB-C only MacBook Pro is out. Many manufacturers have followed, and USB-C is very common on many devices already. Virtually every device I connect to my Mac on a daily basis uses a USB-C connector. So it follows that 4 ports are no longer enough when I'm doing lots of stuff. For example, right now I want to connect:* USB-C External SSD for music/movie library. * USB-C External HDD for time machine backups. * USB-C Ethernet adapter for LAN. * USB-C to Lightning to iPad for Xcode debugging. * USB-C Power Cable.As you can see, that is more than 4 ports can handle. I'm sure this will only become more common in the near future as more people buy or upgrade their accessories to USB-C.Considering how ubiquitous USB-C 2 hubs once were, you'd think that the same thing would happen to USB-C. However there are exactly zero results for a USB-C to many USB-C ports hub, or anything of that sort, for any search term I try, either on Amazon or even on Alibaba. So from this follows the question:Why? Has the market just not catch up yet? Or is there some technical limitation to creating such a device? Considering the mess the USB3 standard is (and USB4 does not improve on that issue at all) I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case.

benologist · Accepted Answer

The closest thing is Thunderbolt cases - they give you a PCIe slot to work with so you can add a USB-C card so +2 ports and may have ports of their own, this one has +2 ports as well (but you use 1 connecting to it). Some have ethernet ports too. Since a PCIe card doesn't even offer many additional ports I would guess they have to make available a lot of power to each port. The physical size and cost of this is disappointing compared to USB-3 hubs.
https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Thunderbolt-PCIe-Expansi...
Another alternative is to get a small NAS from Synology or QNAP and shift your USB drives to your LAN, some are also connectable via Thunderbolt but that only consolidates the two drives and the bandwidth is overkill for music/movies/backup.
https://synology.com https://qnap.com
You can also get multi-disk enclosures but they're 'dumb' peripherals, while a consumer NAS includes media consumption apps and stuff for phone/web/TV.
https://www.amazon.com/TerraMaster-D5-300C-Enclosure-Exclusi...

windexh8er · Answer

Unfortunately not much has changed with the USB-C landscape with regard to hubs since this was written: https://mjtsai.com/blog/2017/10/14/the-impossible-dream-of-u...

ecesena · Answer

I'd guess it's too expensive to make. Sounds a great space for an open hardware project...

Spooky23 · Answer

I think that the complexities of power make it too difficult to implement.