Belkin Thunderbolt 3 Dock Pro

I have an MBP M3 Pro, I went through multiple docks and dozens of reviews trying to find a dock that would give me:1. One cable to plug into the MacBook Pro.2. Must support dual external displays (I use 1080 not 4K).3. Must work in both open and clamshell mode.4. Must charge the MacBook Pro.5. Must support peripherals through my Cable Matters USB switch.6. No software installation is required, the dock must support all functionality out of the box without any additional software (ex: DisplayLink) or drivers.None of the other docks I tried worked, they would either mirror the display or not show the desktop on one of the displays at all, and the reviews were useless since they were all old reviews for Intel MacBooks.I chose this one because my company gave me a Belkin dock for my work MacBook Pro (also an M3 Pro). At the office I use that dock to get dual monitors in both open and clamshell mode. The Belkin dock they gave me was an F4U095, which is their Thunderbolt 3 Express dock, this one is the F4U097 which is their Thunderbolt 3 Pro dock. Because the Express version of the dock works, I thought surely this Pro version would work with my personal MBP M3 Pro.I am pleased to report that this dock does indeed fulfill all of the requirements above. Here are some specifics about my setup:* My mouse, keyboard, headphones and a USB flash drive are connected to a USB switch from Cable Matters (ASIN: B0CT6CK72N), I connect this to the USB-A port on the back of the Belkin dock through a USB-C cable (ASIN: B01GGKYIHS) and a UGREEN USB-C to USB-A converter (ASIN: B0CY1Y3TSQ). I connect to the dock through USB-A because with my setup there are no free USB-C ports on the back of the dock, there's one on the front but having the cable go around to the front is ugly.* Sceptre M32 monitor, connected by HDMI to DisplayPort on Belkin dock (cable ASIN: B015OW3M1W). This monitor is a gaming monitor with up to 144Hz refresh rate, MacOS lets me pick up to 100Hz using this cable and dock.* Acer monitor, connected by HDMI to Thunderbolt 3 Port on Belkin dock (cable ASIN: B083KTYFCW).My MBP M3 Pro is almost always in clamshell mode in a vertical stand. Only one cable from the power delivery port on the back of the Belkin dock connects to my MBP and it provides 85W of charging power along with the connection to everything, which is way more than enough, I used to charge at 67W, even 45W would probably work, 20W would but only if the Mac was sleeping.❌ Problems Encountered:❌ When the MBP is sleeping and I wake it, only one of the monitors (the Acer) immediately works. The Sceptre is recognized in the Display settings in MacOS but the display is black and it will eventually switch to a different source as if it's unrecognized. I've heard other docks have this problem (CalDigit) but I'm not sure. At first I "fixed" this by unplugging the Sceptre from the Belkin dock and plugging it back in, but I found a better fix: switch the source on the Sceptre to the MBP, turn the Sceptre off immediately (immediately as in don't wait for the source switch to finish), then turn it back on and it magically turns on with the proper source. This technique is easy to do and doesn't wear out the connector like disconnecting it and reconnecting it will. I don't blame this weirdness on the dock, the Acer works fine and I noticed on the prior docks I tried the Sceptre has always been the one that performs weird with every one of the other docks I tried, it's a Sceptre issue in my book, or maybe it's the HDMI to DisplayPort cable, might try switching this cable to the Acer monitor to see if it moves the problem to that monitor. I also believe this only affects setups where you have a monitor which is connected to multiple sources, where the Belkin dock is one of them (my Windows PC and Asus gaming laptop are the two other sources). If I unplug those devices completely or if they're both asleep, this problem goes away, so if you're using a setup where you only have the Belkin dock connected to the monitor, this is pretty much a non-issue.❌ This dock behaves differently when you put the MacBook to sleep by explicitly telling it to (click Apple icon -> "Sleep") versus inactivity. If you explicitly put the MacBook to sleep through the Apple icon the dock will show an orange status LED (indicating no connection) and the dock will become cool to the touch, if you let it fall inactive the dock will show a green status LED (indicating connection) and the dock will remain warm as if it's in use. Neither state will affect charging or waking; even with an orange status LED it's still treated as if connected to the charger and you can still wake it up by hitting any key on the keyboard or pressing any mouse button. Obviously if you want to save electricity you'd want to explicitly put it to sleep. I noticed even if you explicitly put it to sleep the orange status LED will turn green for a minute here and there, some kind of waking going on but return to orange for most of the time.❌ It took FOREVER for the MacOS 80% charge limit (optimized charging) to work with this dock. I didn't unplug my MacBook Pro for roughly three weeks straight before MacOS finally recognized my "usage pattern", then it did the 80% limit thing and showed "Desktop Mode" in the Battery/Charging settings. I honestly had given up at the two week mark thinking it was broken forever with this dock, usually the 80% limit kicks in after a day or two, one week tops. I don't blame this on the dock the MacOS machine learning optimized charging feature has always SUCKED, everyone complains about it. Now that it's kicked in at least once it now works better than it ever has, I've had to restart MacOS three times so far (two of them due to MacOS updates 15.3.2 and 15.4) with this dock, on every restart it goes up to 100% then after a few hours the optimized charging kicks in, it shows "Desktop Mode" and stops charging, which then brings it back down to 80%.The "System Information" shows its state as "Not Charging" once it's at 80% and nothing funny happens with the charge cycle count either, in case you're like me and worried some charging issue with the dock will cause extra cycles and wear on the battery. The charge cycle count in "System Information" has not increased since I started using this dock, it was at "9" when I started using the dock on 2/1/25, it's still at "9" today on 4/1/25 almost two months later.🤔 Miscellaneous thoughts:🤔 If you get your configuration set up and everything connected properly but something isn't working, try what I mentioned above about switching the source and turning the monitor off, or unplugging the monitors on both the monitor side and dock side, your monitor might be like the Sceptre monitor who knows.🤔 The "System Information" app shows that the charging wattage is 85W which correctly matches Belkin's claim. It also shows this dock in the Thunderbolt section which is why it works well, other docks show up in the USB-C section because they're USB-C docks, not Thunderbolt.🤔 The Belkin Thunderbolt 4 docks would likely have met all of my requirements as well, but they cost more and have fewer ports.