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Amazon are selling this one in the UK and it does appear to be cheap cheerful and popular.

I wondered if anyone has had negative experiences of usb hubs re inadequate power or build quality?

grateful for any feedback

if you need any kind of data transfer (external usb drives or similar) is not worth to invest on usb 2.0 these days, look for a 3.0 hub instead

Personally I would spend a little more and go for a seperately powered hub, unless you know the devices you are going to use work off bus power as over the years I have plenty devices that should have worked on bus power but didn't. It is also future proof against any devices you may want to plug in later.

If your machine has USB3 you may want to go for an USB3 hub althiugh they are more expensive.

Jamie, Andres, thanks both for your advice. I had in fact considered a USB-3 hub (I've 2 such slots) but the 3 devices I need immediate slots for are all USB-2 and the laptop has just one USB 2 port.

I'm thinking carefully about the warning on bus power but of the 3 devices, only one would need it so I might just take the plunge and chuck it back if there's a problem.

Ditto on the powered hub. Save yourself some headaches up front.

- thanks, even Amazon's feedback is hinting at that. It's in the balance...

It depends upon your use case. For keyboard/mouse/printer, any hub will do. For USB drives, no.

If the hub is meant simply as port expansion on a PC, the cheap hub can be the expansion for sundry items, leaving "good" ports on the PC for devices that need those.

Even so, the cheap hubs are cheaply made. Don't expect them to stand up to lots of plugging, unplugging, and handling.

The one in the link looks like it was meant for portable use. And that's just where you don't want a cheaply made hub. The cable and connectors don't stand up to much usage.

- it's all beginning to make sense.

I'm thinking now of trying out the Ivory American D. That would immediately put 3 items on the hub

Ilok
Audio interface (UR22 powered from the USB)
VPC1 (self powered)

Which on the face of it demands little more juice than the UR22 was taking from the port on its own (I'm assuming the Ilok needs next to no power at all).

But I'd not considered build quality and I guess I should - thanks for the input.

It probably shouldn't happen, but my system came to grief when I sent MIDI information and digital audio through the same address - which I think must happen if you use a hub. I ended up not only with delays but with blue screens in the end. Disaster!

Now, I make sure to use a separate USB port for everything where any data is being streamed. So I'd avoid putting the VPC1 and UR22 through the same hub.

For what it's worth, my iLok does not work on my (nonpowered) hub. Don't know why,, but that's how it is. I need to use a precious computer USB every time I want to run Mach Five.

That IS a surprise, I suspect you were unlucky there since that's precisely what USB is supposed to be good at. Think 10-port hubs! Maybe it was a freak or a badly designed PC USB input, or even a non powered hub problem?


Wow, this is turning into a minefield! Well I'm definitely going powered - which is a pity because that's another mains lead, cable and clutter.

Thank goodness for amazon and their no-quibble returns (and their reluctance to pay tax on their profits).

The only reason I was using a hub for two vital streams was because the laptop I was using had only two USB sockets, one of which had irretrievably broken down. Hubs are sensitive things, so I use separate ports on the computer now, for music.

I had two hubs, neither of them were powered. The best of the two (it would run imperfectly, but did not cause major systemic problems) was bought from LIDL years and years ago. The other was bought more recently from a tech shop in order to overcome the running problems - was worse for some odd reason.

So I'd really avoid hubs for music or other serious computer applications.

- so, having finally got to the bottom of the USB3/VPC1 mystery I thought I should report back. I ended up buying this. I hadn't intended to buy such an expansive hub but the 4 or 6-way powered weren't much cheaper and, as it turns out, when backing up between a couple of HDDs I'm already into 6 ports. I'm not bowled over by the build quality, plasticky and lightweight but I doubt any of these are built like tanks. In any case, it's worked flawlessly, 2 security dongles, audio interface, VPC1, and 2 hard drives copying can run flat-out simultaneously without a hitch.
I notice quite a few reviews from bitcoin miners who are plugging in and drawing power for what amounts to 10 cpu cards. By all accounts easily within its stride.