I love my Surface Laptop 7. I HATE its available ports.

Two USB-C and one USB-A are woefully incomplete in an era where I really do want to use this machine as a desktop replacement. It feels like the product is incomplete, and it requires an accessory purchase to realize the laptop’s potential.

If I need to use a hub, can I get away with ONLY USB-C ports? It’s an EXPERIMENT!

The folks at EZQuest sent along the USB-C Slim Gen 2 Hub Adapter 6-in-1 for me to take on a test drive and share my thoughts for this review.

I vacillate comically between wanting USB-C to “win” and become the only cable port people use, and returning to a variety of ports like RJ45, HDMI, and USB-A. My standard solution for a travel hub is more like the latter. I have a variety of ports, and a memory card reader, all on one small slab of metal and plastic.

The EZQuest Slim represents the opposite side of this equation, ONLY including USB-C ports.

And that’s it.

It’s clean and simple. More and more of my accessories are USB-C first, and when I need to interact with a USB-A port, I’m looking for an adapter to use the “legacy” rectangle port.

Though, for as much as I like this idea and design, we might not be QUITE ready to give up on other connectors.

When everything is USB-C, we need to label ports for specific accessories.

The EZQuest Slim does this appropriately, each port IS labeled, but this helps highlight one of the frustrations of USB-C. Not all ports are created equal.

The Slim Hub has one port to connect to your laptop, and there’s one port for power input.

For output, there’s one port that supports 4K 60Hz video, and four ports that support up to 10Gbps data. Those four ports SHARE 10Gbps, so individual devices on each port will get a part of the total. You can’t run four devices at 10Gbps.

That doubles for power as well. The Slim Hub accepts up to 100W Power Delivery, but the four accessory ports only allow up to 15W shared power output. Each can individually run up 7.5W, but the total for all four can’t exceed 15W.

This shouldn’t be an issue for most lower power accessories like portable SSDs, but it means a phone or a tablet connected to a laptop through this hub will be SLOW charging.

There is no power brick included. Ports will supply power if the hub is only connected to a laptop USB port, but EZQuest recommends at least a 45W PD charger for the Hub to run well under heavier or more desktop-like use.

That supported my experience, where connecting a single device, an ethernet adapter, it ran well and maxed out the gigabit connection while on laptop battery power. If you have a lot of IO, you’ll want to connect to a charger.

That’s the lifestyle of a hub or a dock. Our laptops are incomplete.

The EZQuest helps add those ports, but that also means having more dongle things sticking out of your machine, and it still might be an incomplete experience. This form factor helps in situations where space might be tight, but you’re still mostly going to use this when you KNOW your laptop will be stationary for a while. We might say it’s “great for hotels where you will only get a small desk to work at”.

The only concern now is the cable.

I was guilty of this on other dock reviews, where I would question the value of a cable built into a laptop hub. The Slim Hub here has a detachable cable, but now I understand why that might not always be a great idea.

It’s the curse of USB-C that all cables LOOK the same, but don’t function the same. For an accessory like this, you’ll want to KNOW that it can handle higher power consumption. EZQuest includes AND LABELS the cable as rated for up to 240W. It’s a thick cable with stiff shielding, and rated higher than my Nomad USB-C charging cables.

It’s really cool that if the cable is damaged or lost, you can replace it, but I worry how few people are educated on the differences. You won’t want to use this with “any old USB cable”.

EZQuest delivers a handy accessory here. USB-C will likely take over as a primary connector. We just need to get on top of cable manufacturers to rate their cables.