USB 3.0 HUB, Bus-Powered USB 3.0 3-Port Aluminum Hub with 2-Slots Card Reader Combo for iMac, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, MacBook, Mac Mini, PCs and Laptops, Black

This product is falsely advertised at a 3.0 USB hub. It is actually at 2.0 hub. After plugging it in and going to the Hardware Overview to see the status of the hub it is listed as 2.0. I have returned it. I am very frustrated. This usb hub also made my computer crash every time it went to sleep. I am assuming because of some bad regulator or no regulator at all. The power supply was pushing electricity back into my computer forcing it to shut down.

I plugged it in and left it. One day my computer slowed to a crawl. I restarted the computer and nothing happened. I thought my motherboard or CPU died. I ended up restarting it and leaving it for awhile. 30 minutes later I came back and saw Windows was booting... very slowly. Turned out it was this hub causing the problem. As soon as I unplugged it and restarted the computer booted up just fine. I try plugging the hub back in and it shows up under Device Manager but it wont work. Computer hangs if I try to uninstall the driver. This thing is junk and died after I had the option to return it of course.

I purchased this to add more external ports to my new 4K computer I built, had my hopes this would fill my needs, it looks to be of great quality and design, I even bought the charger for it.Well after a few months of using it, it’s not reliable, sometimes the USB ports work and sometimes they don’t, and the speeds they say it can transfer at are not even close, it won’t take a memory stick, I have to plug the memory stick into a stand alone hub and then plug the hub into this hub for it to work, and the SD memory card slot don’t work and the micro SD slot don’t work, it never did.I have Win10 pro system with an AMD Ryzen 7 Eight Core Processor, 32 Gigs of RAM, with a video card to match, a Radeon RX 570 Series video card, and numerous 3.0 USB ports and I was hoping that this hub would do the trick.I tried everything to get it to work, no errors show up, they just don’t work right.Maybe it will work on a lesser system but not on mine, the good thing is that I can still attach external hard drives to it and printers and a DVD player/recorder and it works great, it’s just with no cards and no thumb drives. It’s way past my time to return it:(

Finally got this item after 5 year of reaching behind my iMac for USB connections. Item feels very high quality and matches the look of the aluminum iMac as well as keyboard and trackpad. You would think that this is an OEM Apple product.Item was nicely packaged in a cardboard box and both items were wrapped in sealed plastic. Includes a white cord vs a traditional black one which makes it blend in nicely with the look of Apple products.Item has a small circular hole in the back as if its powered, not sure what it is for. Its also a little bit difficult to keep it stable, a little bit of 3M mounting squares fixed that.There wasn't any negligible time difference when using this HUB vs the built in USB ports.Copying from 1.35GB of photos from the USB hub to computer took 53 seconds, and 2 minutes 43 seconds to write the same amount of data from computer to USB hub. When connected directly from USB flash drive into built in USB port it took 54 seconds to transfer from USB to computer and 2 minutes 39 seconds to transfer from computer to USB.Per owners manual:High power consumption devices aren't recommended; as well as this isn't intended as a stand alone charger. iPads and other devices with irregular charging requirements are not compatible.

This hub replaces one that I've used for a long time because it was the older USB slow format. My old one was a Belkin hub that had 5 ports on the back and two on the front for easy access. It came with a large transformer to not overload your computer if you happen to plug in more than one devices that require more power than the bus on your computer can offer. In the case of the Catec hardware, it's an attractive little box that tries to match the look of Apple keyboard or trackpad hardware with the brushed aluminum look and round inserts on the side. It has three USB-3 ports on the front, and two SD cards slots. It conveniently has a rubber no-skid bottom so if your desk is glass it won't skid around when you plug something into it.It doesn't come with a transformer to give you more boost if say, you plug in three portable hard drives and want to copy data between them. If you plan on doing that, then you need to buy the optional DC power adapter, (wall wart) that powers the device. So I did. This brings the price up on the device a few more bucks. What I discovered that the first time I hooked it all up, the unit got warm. And, neither of the SD card slots worked. Plugging in a card, I got nothing. I tried it many times and still nothing. So, I decided to reset it by unplugging the main USB cable on the rear and plugging it back it again. For some reason and I haven't a clue why, that worked. The SD slots suddenly worked for the first time. Having those slots and three USB ports on my desk is a real convenient thing, and since I unplugged and re-plugged it back in, I've had no further problems with it. Strange, but it appears to be working correctly now. I'll give it some time and see if it holds up as well as the old Belkin model did, which they no longer make. That thing was at least 10 years old and still ticking.

I bought this product after reading the 5 star and 1 start reviews. Much has been said, I'll just say this - it works perfectly.I've seen USB hubs come and go in my household. I can also compare it to this one:Sabrent 4-Port USB 3.0 Hub with Individual Power Switches and LEDsTo dismiss some of the claims of those who gave 1 star.Apparently is does not work with USB2 ports. Wrong. It does. I tested it on the following computers: - old HP laptop with only USB ports - connected 1 USB 3 2TB Buffalo drive (no additional power needed). connected 1 USB2 500Gb LG drive (both with no additional power and with additional power extension) SD card from a camera Connected Samsung smartphone to charge. All worked. I transferred aprox. 40GB of films from the UBS2 drive to the laptop disk, 30 minutes, not a glitch - 6 year old PC with USB2 only ports. You must make sure you don't connect them to the front ports, many PC's have front and back USB ports. The front one did not work, the ones at the back worked. I think you need to check what your USB ports are delivering. A PCI card with a new USB3 port may fix your problems. It's not the hub's fault. - brand new Toshiba ultrabook with one USB3 port. I did the same test. Connected USB3 drive, USB2 drive, SD cards, power cable to the smart phone. Transferred 40GB of files from a USB2 external LG drive to a USB3 Buffalo external drive - less than 15 minutes. It works.I would like to dismiss the comments about connections. This hub's connectors are very sturdy. As they have to be. The ones on the hub I mentioned "Sabrent 4-Port USB 3.0 Hub" are not so sturdy, because when moving the hub with your drives connected they can get disconnected. Not with this hub. Yes, they are stiff, they must be.It is also not true it does not work with USB keyboards and mice. Maybe it's the type of device or vendor. I connected a wireless mouse from Logitech M185. Works. Added old Logitech cabled keyboard. All work.As for the operating system I only tested these features on Linux. The response to map the drives is fast. Not a single problem connecting and disconnecting. I don't have an iMac, nor a Windows box. Maybe on Windows it's a matter of drivers, I can't comment on that. I am very happy with the way this hub looks. Some people even complain about the way it looks or feels. To me it's a matter of taste, from a product that would claim to of of Apples quality - I think it deserves it, although I cannot really judge as I don't own Apple products.I will attach pictures of my devices connected to prove a point.

I can't test this yet as I've had to order a longer USB 3 cable @ £5.49 as I actually bought this to add USB 3 connections to my desktop from my on-the-floor workstation which is at least 2m away once you run the cable down and round the back of my worktops and round to the PC - and not that unusual a requirement I would have thought. The unit itself looks great, well-engineered, the 75cm USB cable very sturdy abd he base has a good non-slip finish. I would urge the supplier/manufactured of this unit to add a 2m cable package option being the only reason for knocking a star off the rating. My fault for not having read the cable length description, which is there.EDIT: 18 months on the block failed with a Windows "power surge detected" error . I've ordered another to replace it, which is slightly annoying, but I suspect I got the power surge error after attempting to insert a USB the wrong way round and could see some of the connectors twisted inside the block - which you could argue is user-error Or that this is flimsy internal design, if it's that easy to break after just 18 months service (of hardly ever removing any USB connectors in the whole of that period). I still find it a sturdy, reliable and attractive desktop extension block but I don't think it too much to expect these to last longer than 18 months without failing.EDIT: I did re-order this item, but the design spec has changed. Having to return and deduct another star as the replacement unit now features a fixed usb cable but as of Sep 7th 2021 the product details still show the older, plug in-out usb cable so with this model you're stuck with an even shorter 42cm!

As for the unboxing, the packaging includes the hub itself, in addition to a data sync cable, and a manual going over safety info and device compatibility. The product is very well designed and looks great, the hub offers cars support which is fast via the USB 3.0 interface, and offers great speeds for transferring photos, videos etc. from SD cards. There is an included rubber base, which stops the hub from moving around, which makes using the product a lot better. As for USB Type A ports, there work as intended, and is great for connecting many devices when wanting to search for backup files on many drives.Overall am impressed by the product, and offers great flexibility, the design is great, and the rubber base makes it easy to use. Have not tested the micro SD slot, however am more than sure it'll work. Dan.

I bought this to give me extra USB ports so I do not have to keep unplugging and re-plugging leads into the back of the computer. This hub comes with a few instructions and so some trial and error is needed. Looking from the front, the far right is suitable for phone charging and the centre USB port is lower power so a slower charge rate. The left port is not suitable for charging but it can handle the mouse. I have not used the SD slots. The Hub is useful and I expect it will prove worthwhile as time goes on. The best thing is the hub can be at the front and there is no need to reach around the back of the computer.

It's a USB3 hub, with a detachable USB3 micro-B cable on the back (the same type of connector as used by modern USB3 external HDDs). Cable length is about 70cm, so good for laptop-on-desk use but maybe not long enough for a full desktop PC.It works and provides good speedy throughput. Used with my Surface 3 (not-Pro) tablet, there is a bit of a speed drop for both a crazy-fast USB3 flash drive (Kingston HyperX, goes from 271 MB/s read speed when connected directly, down to 267 MB/s when connected through this hub) and a fast SD card in a fast card reader (90 MB/s read speed directly connected, 76.5 MB/s when the same Kingston USB card-reader is connected to this hub, and down to 73.6 MB/s when using the card-reader built in to this hub instead).Not many SD cards or flash drives can even work at these speeds so you probably won't even notice, and the slight reduction in speed is still well worth it for the ability to plug multiple things in at once.USB3 external hard disk: Yes, it works with one of them. I did a quick test plugging one of my external USB3 "laptop-style" (doesn't have a mains supply) type HDDs in, and it worked properly. I would not expect it to be able to provide power for two at once and I haven't tested that.