First Published: 12/7/2017       Last Modified: 11/20/2018      Last Modified by: LL    Article ID:218

Products Affected:   TS3 Lite - Thunderbolt Station 3 Lite, TS3 - Thunderbolt Station 3, TS3 Plus

Customers using the 2 meter long Thunderbolt 3 cable with Thunderbolt 3 dock and some Lenovo computers, such as Thinkpad X1 Carbon 6th Gen, Thinkpad X280, may experience issues with their connected displays flickering, Ethernet disconnection or USB drive dropout after extended use. This is due to a vast and diverse Thunderbolt 3 hardware landscape which makes it difficult to account for every hardware variation present in the different Thunderbolt 3 devices and hosts currently on the market. As a result we have discovered that the 2 meter Thunderbolt 3 active cable may run into certain video and disconnecting issues with any Thunderbolt 3 setup when connecting to some Lenovo computers. For instance, if you have a ThinkPad X280, when using the CalDigit Thunderbolt 3 Active cable with a Lenovo's Thunderbolt 3 dock or CalDigit TS3 Plus, users may notice that the video on their connected display(s) blink on and off after extended use. This is due to an inherent hardware difference between the 2 meter CalDigit Thunderbolt 3 Active cable and the Thunderbolt dock’s handling of video streams. In this case, please contact your Thunderbolt 3 device or host vendor to verify if your equipment is capable of using 2m cable. Some devices or host machines may only be able to connect with 1 meter or less than 1 meter cable. Some devices may also require video firmware update from time to time. Please check with your vendor. You can also use a 0.5m or 0.7m Thunderbolt 3 cable if the entire setup is not working properly with 2m cable. This issue is NOT present when the 2 meter CalDigit Thunderbolt 3 cable is used with any of CalDigit Thunderbolt 3 hardware including the TS3 and TS3 Lite docking stations to connect to Mac, Dell, and HP computers.