Docking station recommendation for triple monitor setup

If you want to keep using your MacBook Air:

DisplayLink technology creates a "fake" display buffer in RAM, sends the data out over a slower interface to a stunt box with DisplayLink custom chips that put that data back onto a "legacy" interface. It is not a true "accelerated" display, and it can suffer from lagging. Just adding the DisplayLink Driver is not adequate to get a picture -- you need a DisplayLink "stunt-box" or a Dock that includes DisplayLink chips.

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It may be acceptable for a second display showing slow-to-change data such as computer program listings, stock quotes, or spreadsheets, but NOT for full motion Video, not for Video editing, and absolutely not for gaming. Mouse-tracking on that display can lag, and can make you feel queasy.

In a pinch, it may even play Internet videos (as one user put it) “without too many dropped frames".

The Apple standard for its built-in hardware-accelerated displays, makes them suitable for full-motion video for production/display of cinema-quality video with NO dropped frames, and NO dropouts or partial-blank scan lines due to memory under-runs or other issues. This requires a hardware rasterizer/display-generator for each fully-accelerated display.

If you are only doing program listing and stock quotes and other slow to change data, there are some other solutions, but they require you to make some strong compromises.

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It is really nice to know that you can use a DisplayLink display if you MUST have an additional display for some of the types of data I mentioned. But that is NOT the same as the computer supporting a second, built-in, Hardware-accelerated display.

These displays depend on DisplayLink software, and are at the whim of Apple when they make MacOS changes. There have been cases where MacOS changes completely disabled DisplayLink software, and it took some time for them to recover.

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I think the Big Surprise for a lot of Hub/Dock buyers is that they thought they were getting a "real" display, but actually got a DisplayLink "fake" Display. If you got what you expected in every case, I would not use such pejorative terms to describe DisplayLink.

>> Caldigit does not make any DisplayLink products.

if you want to use a MacBook Pro with Max processor, that supports several fully Hardware accelerated displays on whatever port(s) you choose. A Dock is not required -- A Dock is used as an enhancement to free up ThunderBolt ports for other uses.

You can connect a modest-sized HDMI display to its built-in HDMI port.

You can connect a ThunderBolt display or a USB-C display directly to a Thunderbolt port with only an appropriate cable.

You can connect many other displays using an adapter from a ThunderBolt port to DisplayPort, HDMI, DVI, VGA or possibly other even more obscure interfaces.

To use up to two fully Hardware-accelerated displays on one cable out of a qualified Mac, the cable out of the Mac must be a genuine ThunderBolt cable, and connect to a genuine Thunderbolt first device (Dock or Display).

USB-C cable to USB-C first device (Dock or Display) will NOT suffice.

The Apple standard for its built-in hardware-accelerated displays, makes them suitable for full-motion video for production/display of cinema-quality video with NO dropped frames, and NO dropouts or partial-blank scan lines due to memory under-runs or other issues. This requires a hardware rasterizer/display-generator for each fully-accelerated display. 

If you are only doing program listings, spreadsheets, stock quotes, and other slow to change data, there are some other solutions, but they require you to make some strong compromises.

<< What I'm hearing from you is, if I don't want to use a dock, I can daisy-chain three Thunderbolt monitors from one of the ports on the Mac. Is that correct? >>

NO.

The ordinary way is ONE display to a cable.

'Daisy-chain' implies going from device-to-device-to-device. That is not supported except under extremely constrained circumstances and is limited to at most TWO display on a genuine Thunderbolt cable as described above.