14
votes
Request for KVM!
Hi, all.
I'd like to ask for a lazy recommendation. I last bought a KVM maybe 6-9 months ago and I returned it because of audio interference as well as low refresh rates on one operating system.
Ideally, I'd like the KVM to support:
- 1-2 4k monitors over either HDMI or USB-C at a minimum of 120Hz
- 1-2 USB-C peripheral ports
- 1-2 USB-A peripheral ports (presumably we're still at 3.1?)
- audio via 3.5mm
- RJ-45 @ 100 or 1000 Mbps
- a physical button to swap between inputs
For the most part we're talking about swapping between a MacBook Pro and a Windows Desktop. I would love if I could also include my Mac Studio in.the cycle of devices but I absolutely understand If I can only have two.
I hope you're all alright with me flippantly asking for a recommendation! I'm not a KVM expert. I spend my time elsewhere. I was really annoyed at the low performance of the previous KVM I bought. I hope there are folks on Tildes that can rave and rant about their KVM preferences. Thanks folks!
Last time someone asked for KVM recommendations several people spoke highly of Level1Tech's KVMs, so that might be a good place to start looking:
https://www.store.level1techs.com/products/hardware
Thank you for the link. I should have searched for previous links. Honestly I think I read that one. Most likely it was that post that made me think to ask this here.
NP. I don't have much experience with KVMs so can't recommend any in particular, but I wanted to try to help by at least pointing you in the right direction. :)
I think subconsciously, the post you linked is what made me think to post here. I'm looking through these L1 options and asking myself if the crapshoot I experienced at the $80 price point justifies an $800 price point. Appreciate the reminder of these products.
I own a ~$500 kvm from L1T that I use for two hi dpi monitors, switching between linux desktop to MacBook Pro. It works well, and L1T support was happy to answer my questions during initial setup.
Personal recommendations of this brand are just the worst possible news for me this evening. Do you have anything running 120Hz+?
In even worse potential news for your wallet, if you look at the L1Techs YouTube channel there are a few highly technical videos of the guy who designed it explaining in excruciating detail how most other devices are not following the specs with the consummate engineer’s air of “why can’t they just do it right, goddamit?!”
Sure, everything is marketing these days and we should trust nothing, but if that guy can capture the frustration of my inner monologue when looking at software with corners cut and standards ignored I’m inclined to believe him on the hardware too.
4K 240Hz lol. Cables that actually work at the necessary bandwidth aren’t cheap either. Club3D is recommended by L1T; I use Cable Matters.
I was shopping for something similar a few years ago, but found that for the whatever reason KVMs either all suck and/or are insanely priced for what you get, especially if opting for a Thunderbolt option (which can be nice for MacBooks to take advantage of).
What I did instead was to instead buy a really nice Thunderbolt dock (CalDigit TS3+ which has since been upgraded to a CalDigit TS4, now there’s a couple TS5 variants for sale) and a cheap magnetic cable holder thing to stick next to it on my shelf. When I want to switch machines physically unplug one TB/USB-C cable and plug in the other.
Sounds janky but it works well. It gets me full thunderbolt and a ton of ports on a high quality dock. Been swapping between work/home machines for years like this. I also occasionally switch to a gaming PC with a long cable which works ok except my GPU really hates trying to do VRR via USB-C/TB for some reason and greatly prefers plain old DP or HDMI.
Seconding Caldigit if you end up going down the not-quite-KVM route. They aren’t cheap, but as with the L1Techs hardware they do actually spend that money on engineering and spec compliance - if you’re ok with a 90% solution you can get it a lot cheaper, but if you need something 100% rock solid you are actually paying for quality rather than (just) markup.
CalDigit also splits some responsibilities up between multiple controllers so the dock doesn’t easily get overburdened, where many competitors only use one which further reduces flakiness.
I'm not opposed to jank. How do you manage audio switching in your setup, if at all?
I don’t really use the audio ports on the dock. I have a USB DAC/amp hooked up to my personal Mac directly that I use for music even while switched to the work Mac and AirPods get used for conference audio.
You can use a USB sound card and plug that in the dock. Some docks come with one effectively build in.
If you own both computers and they are not managed by a company then a thunderbolt dock is a nice option. Judging by your start post that seems to be the case. Some companies disable (part of) thunderbolt in the bios on managed laptops for security reasons as thunderbolt effectively exposes full PCIE which increases potential attack vectors (or so I have been told).
Can it do dual 144hz at 1440p? I run my thunderbolt dock in the same janky method as you, however I keep my macbook in clamshell mode so that I can use my desktop dual monitors.
Can’t say for certain, but I imagine yes because I’m driving a 27” 5k (5120x2880) 60hz monitor alongside a 27” 2560x1440 144hz monitor which should take as much or more bandwidth.
Have you looked into the JetKVM kickstarter? I’ve been trying to get some but because of tariffs they cut off new US customers so I’m on the waitlist.
They’re super cool devices with absurdly good fit and finish for a new kickstarter product (mine finally arrived last week!), but if 120Hz is a minimum requirement I probably wouldn’t be looking at it as the best option.
So far at least JetKVM definitely seems to be focusing on remote access first and foremost - so they’ve got good latency and responsiveness (for a remote device) rather than good latency and responsiveness (compared to hardwired peripherals).
Hello, world. I am a US citizen and I am very sorry.
Same here, I was hoping you weren’t so you’d have a better chance of getting one shipped to you but I’ve been waiting for this KVM to come out for almost a year now since it seems perfect for one of my client’s needs.
I don't have any recommendations, sorry.
As of the last time I or any of my colleagues were looking into and discussing this (probably ~5 years ago?) the answer was "every hardware KVM is horrendous" and we all handled it by plugging separate devices into separate monitor inputs and just making sure that at most one computer was awake at a time. (I think you can get good KVMs that will work decently and pass enough bandwidth for a modern workstation, but they are extremely expensive: in excess of $500.) I haven't heard anything to make me believe the status quo has changed. USB switches for peripherals are also all horrendous, but they're at least also cheap so it won't break the bank to go through a couple before the lottery lands you something that works okay and holds up.
I have a monitor which actually has embedded KVM functionality (the built-in USB hub switches host depending on where it's taking video from), which does work okay (it's very bad at switching between live devices because the device's detection that there's a live monitor on the output and the monitor's detection that it's receiving input race, and if the device loses, the monitor will try to automatically switch back), and almost meets your needs (the monitor itself is 3840x2160, it has 1 USB-C/Thunderbolt port, 4 USB-A 3.1 ports, and a physical button, but the button is on the back of the monitor, and, as I mentioned, switching live devices doesn't work great). I dunno that I'd recommend it, but it's something you could consider.
A few thoughts on your port desires:
It may be easier to use a USB audio interface, which carries a bunch of other benefits (like being able to plug in a halfway-decent microphone) besides. The Behringer UM2 gets pooh-poohed by professional musicians and audiophiles, but is an excellent choice for amateur or home office use (although it has no 3.5mm ports, you'll need to adapt 6.35mm TRS or RCA (!))
There's no point to less than gigabit these days, and honestly, I would probably try to get at least 2.5gbit for any new purchases. If all the devices you're plugging in already have separate network interfaces, it may be easier to introduce a network switch (I have no idea what's in vogue these days, I have a handful of the classic Netgear blue box switches which are great) than switch a USB network interface.
Not a KVM!
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N6GD9JO?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_5
and however many of these for however many monitors you have
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JQH1L83?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_4
If it's just two USB C laptops and a dock just get one of these and jack it into the dock.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CLZ7WP1N?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_1
I use the above to connect my two work laptops (same employer) to my Lenovo dock and it works fine. You might wanna run chargers for each laptop for consistent power, and wifi is possible to prevent network connectivity issues.
My setup with two HDMI switches and the USB switch is also helpful if I'm working late, monitoring something like an update or execution job of some sort and I want to have it on a second monitor while I game on my desktop. I actually prefer this to a KVM. And if any part fails I just replace it, slap some 3M velcro on it, and we're rocking.
I have three computers (Two Surface Laptops and my desktop) connected to two monitors and one USB hub.
I do have one of those ugreen usb switchers and this one does work okay. However, there are a lot of variations from just ugreen alone. Some of them are most certainly not USB compliant and some of them actively cause issues. I had an earlier model where the two computers were not properly isolated. Leading to current leaking and all sorts of interference and shenanigans.
I have a ugreen one and it messes up the keyboard, somehow. If i boot up and don't touch it or switch a single time, everything's fine, but if I try to actively switch between two machines and type, it will randomly cause a key press to freeze, so I'll be typing until suddennnnnnnnnnnnnnn until I realise and press another key to snap it out of it. It makes it unusable as an active switcher, tbh. I use it to allow me to have one setup for teleworking and my own machine, and since they're very very rarely on at the same time, it's fine. That's why I'm reading this thread though - it'd be great to find something that works.
I was looking at your links and thinking that a handful of those would be a much more economical solution than a typical KVM switch, but with the downside of having to switch each device independently. Then I got thinking that it wouldn't be that complicated (relatively speaking) to crack those open and wire all the switches up to a single button, so they would all switch at the same time. Then I realized I had reinvented a KVM switch and the idea was dumb.
But then I realized that I had actually invented a modular KVM switch and it could actually be kind of neat. If you made individual switches like this in a standard form-factor with a standard switch connection, you could put together the exact combination of ports you need, and it could be future-proof because you can just add whatever new ports come along.
Anyone want to pitch this on Shark Tank with me?
It's a very minor tradeoff. I get to the end of my workday, hit three buttons in less than a second and am ready to go. I actually like the modularity for the reasons I mentioned as well. I wish it was cleaner, but it still works well enough.
I admittedly do not fully understand your use case, so there's a solid chance my suggestions won't bear any fruit for you. Have you considered a software KVM solution instead of hardware? It sounds like you have two monitors, so if you dedicated one monitor to each system for the majority of the time, you could use software like input-leap to share the keyboard and mouse seamlessly between the two. If your monitor has some sort of audio out or internal speakers, then you could use audio over HDMI. Or you could use software like Snapcast to stream from one system to the other. That just leaves a USB switch and or dock as the point of contention, but there are also software solutions to share USB devices over the network if you wanted to go that route.
I use a setup similar to this to share my PC's keyboard and mouse to a work laptop. I'm lucky enough to have the Dell P4317Q which has the ability to display four 1080p inputs in a grid, so I have two personal windows, and two work windows displayed at all time. It's been highly productive for my personal use case, but the display sucks for gaming, or 4k video editing among other things.
Use case is basically three machines:
I'd like to blend all three devices onto two monitors in front of me with one keyboard, mouse, and set of speakers. It'd be great to have another 1-2 usbs to feed nonsense in on occasion like a microphone or flash drive.
Mostly want to use only one device at a time. But definitely swap between all three throughout the day.
Do you need to be able to switch between the computers while they are running, or is it generally a one at a time solution (eg: Work and Personal in a home office)?
It it's the latter, a USB switcher may be all you need. I have an older version of this one, mine only has USB A ports which suits my purposes well enough. All my peripherals (mouse, keyboard, audio) plug into it, and then it is connected to my 2 computers (directly to my personal PC and via a docking station to my work laptop), which are each connected to my monitors directly. That way switching the peripherals is all I need to do, and the monitor source detection takes care of the display.
The downside is that switching when both machines are on isn't as seamless as a full KVM, but putting the machine I'm not currently using into sleep/standby lets the monitors switch to the active one.
I've not looked to see if anyone makes a similar thing that supports more than 2, but it's possible (or maybe you could daisy chain them, though that seems a bit clunky)
I'm hoping for live switching rather than shut off and migrate. The vast majority of the days it's a very clear one or the other, but there are absolutely days where I use both categories of machines on/off throughout.
There are also separate display switchers available, though then you're dealing with multiple buttons.
Is a software solution viable? Moonlight is presented as game streaming software, but ultimately it's just a screen share (there are plenty of other software choices too). If one of the machines is behind a VPN/proxy it would make things difficult though.
Currently no VPN, surprisingly. I'll take a look though some details on Moonlight. Thanks!
Be careful, a lot of these USB switchers aren’t wired in a compliant manner and can cause power to backfeed from one machine to the other.