It will be the most predictable for sure, as TB limits do not come into play.
But OP is far away from those limits anyway.
That is why in general, I really like the WD22TB4. It gives you a good MST-Hub, but it also gives you 2 TB-outs that you can use instead just like on a TB4 hub. There you can access the raw DP signal, get Adaptive Sync and plug in your own MST-hubs if needed, in case the built-in one does not work for your situation. So just the most flexible option for most use cases.
How is that going to help? It forces conversion to HDMI and only gives you a single TB-out that you’d have to split yourself using an external MST-Hub to get to 4 displays.
In general, I would never recommend going with such a device. Because it is basically a TB4 hub (like CalDigit Element Hub with its 3 native TB-Outs that are most flexible). It is just that 2 USB-C-to-HDMI Adapters are built-in that you cannot get around. Should they not work for your displays, the whole dock is scrap. I am never a fan of the dock manufacturer not exposing ports the TB-controller inside it has, because it just takes your options away. Similar to how the Plugable TBT4-UDZ has the same TB controller with 3 TB outputs, of which 2 are used for each pair of HDMI+DP and the 3rd one is not exposed anywhere, even though you are paying for the controller that has it.
The Lenovo and HP TB4 docks do it the same way. They use the same controller, with 3 TB-outs, but only expose 1 of them. The 3rd one is just wasted, probably because they did not want to rework the existing case to fit an additional port.
Jul 3, 2023 update
finally got this installed and it seems to work pretty good.
Yes theres a 4 monitor limit.
If i try to turn 5 monitors on, another will turn off.
Curious: Is this an intel chipset limitation or something?
Also, if i buy one of those cheap USB2VIDEO connectors, will that allow me to have 5 monitors?
Yes Intel iGPUs from 11th gen on have increased the monitor limit to 4 from the previous three. More would require an additional GPU.
Nvidia GeForce has the same limit. AMD iGPUs as well. Some AMD dGPUs support more, but seems quite undocumented and depends on very deep internals of the GPU to go above 4…
Yes. Basically very weak and incapable external GPUs.
Will get you over that limit, but performance is not comparable to native outputs, but might be good enough for simple office use, or people who are not very sensitive to various artifacts etc.
Also requires drivers to work, because it has to pawn off computation to the CPU or iGPU.
Often problematic to get to work under Linux or on devices without administrative privileges.
Yes. That limit is for the iGPU. Different GPU, new limit. Same with a full eGPU.
And for truly static content with only mouse movement, it would probably not be noticable. Only modern office is quite animated from the cursor moving between letters and all the menus. So the difference can likely be perceived in those instances already.
But it all depends on your sensitivity to those things.
If you need to go over 4 monitors, you do not have another choice, other than a much more expensive eGPU. People should just now what they are paying for and absolutely be discouraged from being stuff like that, if there is a choice / the iGPU can still drive more and you have the ports to do so…
