I you will take advice from someone who actually has an M1 Mac, a significant new feature in Thunderbolt 4 is it can be distributed, like a USB Hub, as well as daisy-chained. This means that using this OWC Thunderbolt 4 hub each of the Thunderbolt 4 ports can be distributed as 3 Thunderbolt ports each of which can be daisy-chained twice for a grand total of 12 Thunderbolt device connections. NOTE: Bootable external drives, must be a high quality SSD, directly connected to one of the two Thunderbolt 4 ports on the M1 Mac and won't work through either a hub or daisy-chain. I have no explanation but until Apple changes something that is the consensus discovery. Non-bootable drives work well through the hub.

Since I purchased the Thunderbolt 4 Hub, OWC has introduced this Thunderbolt 4 Dock which has the same number of Thunderbolt ports along with additional different other ports. The Thunderbolt 4 Hub is perfect for my M1 Mac mini, but If I had an M1 laptop, the Thunderbolt 4 Dock would probably be the better choice.

If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein