Видео

Interesting question. I’m guessing that it was a cost-saving move. On the other hand, it comes down to the leakage current through the bulb switching transistors. If it’s in the microamp range, they probably decided it was about the same as a typical flashlight battery’s self-discharge rate. If I think of it when I’m in Town I’ll grab a meter and try to measure it.

@@Mr.BrownsBasement I wondered if a mod for safety (talk about this at the end) for protection would be to put in a DPST switch for the power and modify it to turn off the 3V when the game is not being played. Use one pole to switch the 9V supply and the other pole to switch the power to the 3V supply.

That would work. But if the leakage is very a few micro amps (if you have a SIMON handy you could measure the leakage with a sensitive ammeter) then switching the 3v supply won’t make much difference. If you’re experiencing short battery life, I’d first suspect you’re using old or poorly made flashlight batteries.

I have never tried partitioning a drive to be used as a data to drive and as a time machine back up. It defeats the purpose of having a back up unit, because if the main drive has a hardware failure, it is the same as the back up unit. You may want to try reformatting your SSD to be a data drive or a Time Machine drive, not both. Also, I don’t know the quality of SSD’s they’re using. The SSD may be slow or defective.

@@Mr.BrownsBasement I don’t understand your comment. The SSD in the dock is separate from the SSD in the M4 and my primary data drive as per original, so why should that be an issue. I did not partition the M4 drive, just the RayCue SSD. I contacted RayCue days ago and have not heard anything back. Not impressed.

Sorry I misunderstood. Please try another SSD for backup. From what I gather from the comments, Raycue’s customer support is poor.

Making your own test leads is probably the best solution.

It was recently released and I don’t know much about it yet. How is it better?

You’re welcome. I hope it was helpful.

That is a reasonable solution.

Interesting. What’s the point of it for $436 CAD ($300 USD)?

​@@Mr.BrownsBasement I noticed the Acasis 80Gbps Thunderbolt 5 SSD Enclosure is also $300 USD. I imagine the price will come down by mid-year as other manufacturers release their Thunderbolt 5 products. There are so few TB5 products on the market they are charging whatever they want.

$300 is outrageous but I guess that’s what the market will bear… for now. Yes, I think you’re right. Prices will come down as competition and variety increases.

Sorry to hear that !! If it helps, I found a comparably priced alternative which is a much, much better product. Check my latest video.

You're very welcome. I appreciate the feedback. I am very happy with my M4 Mac Mini. I went for the M4 Pro version. It's a huge improvement over my Intel iMac! If I were you, I would not jump at buying the dock quite yet. As I said in the video, there are advantages and disadvantages of this particular design. I'm sure by the time you are in the market to buy your own Mac Mini, new and improved products will be available, including products better (faster and/or more versatile) than this one.

@ thank you so much. I will wait. I just get excited. My computer is a terrible one and funds are very low and I’m not willing to pay more than 700 bucks so this computer is amazing to me. I’m already in the Apple ecosystem. I saved up for all the Apple products I like them their like something from Star Trek. I can’t wait to get my hands the Mac mini and see what I can do. I’m easily pleased when it comes to PCs just run civilization and Boulder’s gate in low quality and I’m happy.

Go to an Apple Store and check it out. The base model M4 Mac Mini is $600 USD; if you’re a student you may qualify for a discount. The base model isn’t as fast as mine is, but you might not need the speed -so why spend the extra money?

The dark grey hub you saw in the video I got from Amazon.ca. The description is “WAVLINK USB C Docking Station”. It costs about $60 CAD.

Thank you. I hope your dock works according to expectations as mine does. From what I gather from many comments this company is working hard to destroy its reputation by providing poor (or nonexistent) customer communication and after-sales support. I don’t get it…

For a relatively small company, they’re sparing no effort to sewer their reputation. Take pictures of what you’ve received so you can send some proof. I hope you get a satisfactory answer soon. Please check in here and let me know what happens.

Agreed, it’s certainly not “state of the art”. This dock is about $100 USD. Raycue has just started selling a Thunderbolt (80gb/s) version. It’s $300 USD. But for my budget and my needs (SSD used for Time Machine, no monitor connected to HDMI) it’s quite adequate.

Low dielectric voltage wouldn’t surprise me though the wires on mine were mostly insulation with a very thin iron core. I’d expect a spectacular (but brief) fireworks display at 80 amps. While tempting, I don’t think I’m going to try.

Watch my video on speed tests of the Raycue dock. TLDR: no measurable difference. However , another RUclipsr did tests on this exact dock and found a 5 to 10% difference in speed.

I didn’t experience that problem. Link: www.amazon.ca/WGGE-WG-026-Pieces-Colors-Alligator/dp/B06XDM8BY1/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?crid=18SGX0S8OV8NC&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.WKgQgW5WW7mshgCx15o2MSuAYDanh2FRV-d1Zya_aGrGjHj071QN20LucGBJIEps.tSai7-UgeRq1WcRH-xESZo_fKtgmQlE4OIUWBV3N0eM&dib_tag=se&keywords=wgge+wg-026&qid=1738257178&sprefix=wgge%2Caps%2C98&sr=8-2

The main weakness of this dock is the 10gb/s limit. Hopefully faster products arrive soon.

Yeah although I'm intrigued to find out if Ray Cue's 40gbps version is full 4 x 4 pcie

@brennanharvey1593 My guess is no, based on the price point of $100 USD. Incidentally, Raycue is offering a 80gbps unit now at $300 USD …

@@Mr.BrownsBasement - yeah I saw the 80gbps version for £249 here in UK but it's a tad extreme for my uses and budget. The Ugreen was only £69.99 and is full 4.0 x 4 and works perfectly

The price is extreme. I would expect it to drop a lot. And when it does, maybe I’d consider it.

Thanks for the advice. Hope you enjoyed the video.

I would expect accessory manufacturers to refresh their product lines for the Mac studio when Apple refreshes the Mac studio. For the original Mac mini, I wouldn’t hold my breath on that one.

Ouch! I hope they respond quickly. Let me know what happens.

@@Mr.BrownsBasement Thanks for the reply. About 30 minutes after I wrote this I went back to the Raycue. This time, i got my own philips head screw driver bit and a longer, larger shank. I pushed it in, and could feel it grab (not totally stripped, but that original screw driver they sent was toast), and it came right now. I'm back in the game now, and will finish it up tomorrow! Thanks.

@ Yeah, the included screw driver was better than nothing but not much. Good going, you should be in business now. It would have been nice if they'd thrown in a few spare screws though…

Errors happen. Addressed in video description.

You're very welcome. I hope it was helpful.

@@JohnAudioTech thanks for the info. I am working on a new video about an inexpensive alternative that is 1000% better than the iron-core garbage in my original video.

Thank you for your kind words.

The SSD inside the hub is used for Time Machine. It would have been whatever format chosen by the system for. Backup drive. I don’t think it’s APFS but I can check if you’d like. A difference of 11 MB/s is not significant. Different SSDs from the same manufacturer, same model, same size, will not have the same read & write speeds. Even running tests on the same SSD multiple times will often yield a range of results.

@@Mr.BrownsBasement Time Maschine is what I had intended too. But the first Time Maschine backup took ages to complete. As I wrote , Blackmagic Disk Speed showed only 11 MB/s (!!!) for write and roughly 900MB/s read speed. Once I had reformatted to HFS+, I get 900MB/s write and 870MB/s read which compares to your initial tests. The slow write speed with APFS is disappointing so I kept the HFS+ for now. But this implies, that I can't use this drive for Time Maschine as intended, as this requires APFS as far as I know. Are you still happy with the write performance? I guess, you can't run Blackmagic Disk Speed again on your drive while dedicated to Time Maschine to re-confirm your initial measurements - right? Anyway: Mind sharing, what NVME drive model you have? Maybe the slow write speed with APFS is caused by the drive model (the controller on it) I have: WD Blue SN580 2TB.

@Curlyel Since Time Machine archives (or whatever they’re called) cannot be transferred, Time Machine must start from scratch on a new drive. That’s why the first backup takes ages; it’s doing a complete backup of everything, not just an incremental backup. I don’t remember how long the first backup took on the M4 Mac Mini, but it took a while. Now when I do a backup after using iMovie or FCP it typically takes less than 30 seconds. I don’t know the R/W speeds because I can’t run Black Magic on a drive formatted for Time Machine. The Time Machine SSD in my Raycue dock is a Lexar NM790 (4TB). I don’t recall how the system formatted it (HFS or APFS). I just used the defaults.

@@Mr.BrownsBasement Thanks for that reply too. Coincidentally I've just ordered a likely quite similar drive: Lexar EQ790 to rule out the drive as the suspect. Don't know the exact differences between NM790 to EQ790, TBW is a bit lower on the EQ, but probably same controller as yours, so I hope it will do better than the WD Blue.

@@Curlyel I had never heard of the EQ790 so I asked Mr.&Mrs. Google to get me some info. The EQ790 must be a very new drive because there's not a lot of information about it on the Web. At least not yet. The TBW on my 4TB NM790 is 3000TBW (3 petabytes written!) which means I would have to fill it completely 750 times. Even if you get only 80% of that, that's still a crazy about of data. I just checked: My Time Machine drive is APFS. Best of luck with the new SSD. Let me know how it works for you.

It’s possible that the proofreaders & package designers are not as adept at their job as the engineers who designed the product. It’s easy to joke at errors and oversights like this. I did. In their defense, I’d point out that a surprising number of native English folk can’t spell to save their lives. I routinely run into people born and educated in Canada who don’t know the how to use ‘there”, “they’re” and “their” correctly, and think a semicolon is the result of abdominal surgery.

@@Mr.BrownsBasement You're right. Hope those are only small flaws and the product is as good as they tried to make it look.

You’re welcome 😊. I can only speak of my favourable experiences with Lexar and Samsung SSD’s. Beyond that I can’t say. However, I would suggest avoiding no-name and suspiciously inexpensive SSD’s as you may not get the service life, performance or capacity you need for your precious data.

Sorry to add to your problems! :) Seriously, when you unplug the wired headphones from the jack, that output device will disappear. What SHOULD happen is the previously used output device (i.e., the one you were using before switching to headphones) should be re-selected for you. In other words, you shouldn't have to go back to the Settings each time. I hope this helps.

Thank you for your kind words.

More E-waste! 😔 I think I may have found an inexpensive set of test leads that are ok. I’m working on a video about them now.

I hope that cures the problem. I have two NQ790’s. No problems with either one.

@@Mr.BrownsBasement NQ790 turned up today and works spot on, therefore the WD Black SN770 was either faulty or incompatible.

@canecreek00 So glad to hear you’re up & running!

RS (Tandy) has been gone from Canada for about 20 years. Back in when they were in their prime here (70s and maybe 80s) their stuff wasn’t bad. Sorry you had a bad experience.

My internet speed tests were at low speeds because they vary widely over the day. I repeated my tests (at a time of the day when the internet was faster) but the results were the same: no significant difference with the dock attached or not. I think the vents are enough for air to get in. The dock can run warm but never enough to heat the Mac Mini to make its fan speed up.

😊

You finally received it -Great news! Yes, it’s strange sticking the SD card in upside down. I haven’t needed the micro-SD yet, but good to know. I’m using the SSD enclosure for Time Machine as well so speed there isn’t a big deal.

@@Mr.BrownsBasement Yeah I kinda forced my card in until I realised they've installed the port upside down.

@canecreek00 if it makes you feel any better (…it probably won’t, but here goes…) I did the same thing with my JVC handicam. I don’t know how but I did. You’re in good company.

Thank you for the compliment but you don’t have to listen to my voice all the time. I can’t escape from it. And it won’t stop!! 😊

Thank you for your comment. I put the music track in to cover up minor imperfections in my voice and recordings which I found distracting and unpleasant. I may experiment with putting it in at a lower level. I have added my own English closed-captions to this video so if you want you can watch and get something better than the auto-generated captions.

When you plug headphones into the RayCue's 3.5 audio jack, you should see a new output device appear in your Sound Control Pane. It will be called KT_USB_AUDIO. You must select that output device. The first time I tried it, it didn't work. However, after unplugging and plugging in again, it reliably appears now. And it works! Please let me know if that works for you.

Let me quote from the instruction pamphlet: “USB-C port: Supports 5V3A power supply (only supports product power supply) ! We recommend using 5V/3A power adapter to ensure optimal performance.” From that, I infer that it is a power supply input, possibly because it may be limited as to how much power it can draw through the host connection. I have not tried plugging in a power supply into that port for two reasons: I don’t have a 5V3A USB-C power supply, and not wanting to see what happens if I were to accidentally plug the power supply into another port. Would the port be damaged? They don’t say and I’m not keen to try that experiment.

I ordered a Raspberry Phi power supply supply to use with the dock however I would like some confirmation regarding input/ output #6. I have sent a few messages to Raycue however no response so far.

I have what you have: the instruction pamphlet. Don’t hold your breath waiting for an answer from Raycue. One thing consistent in the comments so far is that Raycue’s customer support track record is in the dumpster.

I agree anything less than 40GB/s speed is not taking full advantage of the M4 Mac Mini’s potential. It’s got to be priced reasonably as well. I’m fully expecting many more manufacturers to enter this poorly served market in 2025. There are large bags of money to be made by those companies that can get it right.

Another competing M4 Mac Mini dock has a reputation for killing Wi-Fi to the Mac Mini. A number of commenters asked me to see if the dock made any difference to the Wi-Fi signal so I did a RUclips short on that issue. But you're right, there is no Wi-Fi speed test in this video. A few days later, I did another video you may wish to check out. (It's not long): ruclips.net/video/fSFe8sjpZj4/видео.html In it, I used fast.com to look at the speed delta with an without the dock connected. Take a look, let me know if that is helpful to you.

I don’t think we’re going to see TB5 for a while. I expect the price and/or availability of the TB5 interface chips is the issue. TB4 with a better complement of ports? MIA?

Let me quote from the instruction pamphlet: “USB-C port: Supports 5V3A power supply (only supports product power supply) ! We recommend using 5V/3A power adapter to ensure optimal performance.” From that, I infer that it is a power supply input, because it may be limited as to how much it can take through the host connection. At this moment, the only thing connected up to mine is a connection to an iPhone for charging. Occasionally, I have a card in the SD card slot, but I’m only using the Raycue’s other ports intermittently. I have not tried plugging in a power supply into that port for two reasons: I don’t have a 5V3A USB-C power supply, and not wanting to see what happens if I were to accidentally plug the power supply into another port. Would the port be damaged? They don’t say and I’m not keen to try that experiment.

That’s awful. I hope Raycue responds and works to resolve the issue quickly. What kind of SSD is it? Have you tried the SSD in another enclosure to rule out that being the problem?

@@Mr.BrownsBasement Yes - still no response - sent a support an email. it is a wd blue and it works in an orinoko enclosure jr

I was hoping to read that they had already reached out to you. 😔

I have this dock with a 1TB Orico and it works fine. Hope you can sort it out.

I’ve dealt with NVMe SSD’s with heat sinks. I don’t think they would fit. I think if I was very concerned I’d try thermal tape, multiple layers if necessary.

Yes, that’s available too now. It lacks the SD card slot that I find very useful. I have not tried the 40Gb/s version.

It’s not terrible, so don’t feel bad. It’s just not worth it IMHO.

Me too!!!

That’s a good idea. The fins aren’t very high though. I think there would still be clearance issues with your finger.