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Teardown: A Generic 7-Port USB 3.0 Hub That Wasn't
- IveSeenItAll 4mo agoNot much to say about the article itself ("cheap stuff from AliExpress-or-its-Amazon-representatives isn't great, news at 11"), but just in case the author happens to be following comments here: I'm pretty sure the first photo shows your name, address and email in small print at the top?
- nar001 4mo agoIt's actually the importer's info from the Chinese manufacturer, not the OP, since it's the switch packaging (it'd be inside the original package they'd have received from Aliexpress)
- netsharc 4mo agoAliExpress shipping is wild.. as far as I understand it they try to find the cheapest place to send packages from, so (living in Europe) I've received packages from Australia and Azerbaijan. They probably send a palette of stuff to a country that has cheap International postage, and from there the palette of goods get broken down and packaged for the 1000s of end-consumers..
- MallocVoidstar 4mo agoYeah, I used to get stuff directly from China, then after the postage rate changes I was getting packages that had gone China -> Thailand -> Azerbaijan -> USA. Nowadays they seem to batch packages for the good shipping, from Aliexpress in China to (I assume) some US subsidiary, and then from there it gets parceled out to a shipping company seemingly at random (Maersk, Amazon, USPS).
- mrngld 4mo agoSo the US had the USPS stop subsidizing Chinese postage rates... and they innovated to leverage subsidies elsewhere. Just stop subsidizing international shipping period seems the smart play. If they want to undercut their own high-end domestic competition and destroy foreign competitors then they can at least pay fair rates.
- ssl-3 4mo agoWhich part of "send a giant box of stuff to the US using regular shipping channels and pay whatever duties and/or tariffs are due, sort it out into individual destinations once it gets there, and then deliver with USPS at regular domestic rates" involves this subsidy that you speak of?
- Rebelgecko 4mo agoYou used to be able to get knickknacks on AliExpress (incl shipping) for less than the cost of a US domestic postage stamp. Nowadays it seems like free shipping has a higher minimum, and most of my items use unreliable gig economy services like uniuni for the last mile delivery
- flyflewflaw 4mo agoI regularly get addressed Aliexpress packages that contain multiple addressed packages (e.g. from the same order), so they may in fact be sending pallets full of packaged and addressed items to another country for re-packing and re-shipping
- qingcharles 4mo agoI once noticed that there were eBay auctions with free shipping closing with no bids, minimum 1 cent bid. I wrote a script and bid on 1000 random items, all from China, all Aliexpress style items. Every single one of them was shipped from Mongolia.
- NietTim 4mo agoI used to have exactly one like that but without all the bogus 3.0 printing on it.
- Klaster_1 4mo agoWow what an unexpectedly useful article! I have exactly this hub and wondered if I was imagining things. It absolutely has issues beyond that, for example I somehow managed to make a couple of ports unusable for micro-controller flashing even though they used to work just fine. For that price, it's an OK choice to low bandwidth stuff like periphery dongles and security keys, and the form-factor makes it easy to attach under desk or behind display. And buttons come in handy when you need to unpower a dev board. Anyone can recommend a similar shaped proper USB 3 hub off Ali?
- ddtaylor 4mo agoI had the opposite problem actually I think. I have these small nano teensy USB things that are programmable similar to Arduino, but they have a poor negotiation at start. I was using these to automate keyboard activity, so when plugged in they appear as a USB HID. This crappy 7 port hub is one of the only ones that "works" to reprogram the chips over USB. Direct connections and other hubs cause it to always appear as a HID and never appear as a thing that can be reprogrammed.
- lostlogin 4mo ago> I was using these to automate keyboard activity, I’m interested.
- okramcivokram 4mo agoYou can check my own project doing the same. It's a one key keyboard that also can be set to jiggle the mouse a bit. https://github.com/markomarkovic/nena-ilo-lili https://github.com/markomarkovic/nena-ilo-lili
- threecheese 4mo agoDid you use generative AI to design this? Superpowers plugin? This is cool, but if you did use AI that’s another level of cool :) https://github.com/markomarkovic/nena-ilo-lili/blob/main/docs/superpowers/specs/2026-06-09-nena-ilo-lili-design.md https://github.com/markomarkovic/nena-ilo-lili/blob/main/doc...
- preisschild 4mo agoWhats always annoying is by using nested 4-port hub chips inside a hub with more than 4 ports you get very easily to the max nested depth limit (5). I have a monitor kvm switch that is also an usb hub. It itself only has two ports. Two usb hubs (that are internally nested) are plugged into those ports that I have at the back of my desk where all the HID are plugged in, but I also have a usb hub on the front of my desk so I can easily hotplugmy joysticks, yubikeys and usb flash drives. Apparently that use case is very complicated with USB even in modern times :(
- avhception 4mo agoWell, of course there is the "buy cheap, get trash, duh!" talking point. But if I pay more, who's to say I'll get a better product? The OEM or some middleman or whoever might just pocket the difference and push crap anyway. Well-known brands have done this as well, either intentionally or because they got shafted by their supplier as well.
- lostlogin 4mo agoThe stance ‘all hubs are trash’ has served me well.
- bayindirh 4mo agoI managed to get a couple of good ones. While they're more like docking stations, Kingston's, now discontinued, Nucleum and UGreen's wares are all good. If you go higher level, of course there's Thunderbolt docks, but you can't make them cheaply, so they're generally good.
- mrngld 4mo agoI've yet to come across truly reliable Thunderbolt 3 and above stations. Seems like every brand has, like this 7 port wonder in the article, lots of 5 star reviews. When you dig deep into the weeds of the reviews, Reddit, user forums, etc., you find the undercurrent of people who actually bother to check the stats reported by their OS, or have disconnect issues, etc, etc. I'm somewhat sympathetic because from what I can tell engineering something capable of pushing that much data requires some exquisite engineering for every part of the process (chips on your computer, your computers port, your cables, the dock, the cable into the end device and the device and its port and chip). But still, they present these products like they're bulletproof. It's possible I've had bad luck. A Caldigit TS3 had issues with dropping external drives and becoming unresponsive, then died after 2 years. Caldigit TS4 bricked itself after about a year. Got an OWC Thunderbolt Dock now and it just decides sometimes to stop communicating to anything new plugged in until you power cycle it.
- 4mo ago
- bpye 4mo agoThe linked article on the same blog on building a tower of optical drives is also quite interesting: https://goughlui.com/2026/03/15/project-building-an-optical-drive-tower-of-power-associated-challenges/ https://goughlui.com/2026/03/15/project-building-an-optical-...
- bArray 4mo agoI think this was somewhat predictable. The USB cable from the hub is too long, and it's not thick enough. USB3 can also kick off a decent amount of heat, it's not a good sign when the case is in plastic. If you're looking for a good USB3 hub, look for one with a short thick USB cable, metal chassis. If it has HDMI it's a good since because you're unlikely to pump that via USB2.
- mark-r 4mo agoThere's also absolutely no chance that a pure plastic box is going to have proper RF shielding. Good luck finding one with the regulatory marks that make it legal to sell.
- teiferer 4mo ago$5 USD. What did you expect? Always surprises me when people pay essentially nothing for a product and then complain about quality.
- ddtaylor 4mo agoWould you say the same about a vendor selling rotten or spoiled food?
- lostlogin 4mo agoIf it was 1/4 the normal price, I’d be suspicious.
- bayindirh 4mo agoMarketed as a USB 2.0 hub with a single USB 3.0 port? When I last looked, typing truth via keyboards were free and valuable at the same time.
- bigfishrunning 4mo agoWhy type truth when you can have some LLM generate lies?
- bayindirh 4mo agoTo protect turtles?
- teiferer 4mo agoOf course it's wrong. But then again, what did you expect? A high quality super reliable full USB 3.0 speed 7 port hub? For $5? That shouldn't pass anybody's smell test. There is a cost to things, and if the price seems too low then your alarm bells need to go off. (I don't get why I'm downvoted. Maybe I should have been clearer the first time around.)
- 4mo ago
- mschuster91 4mo ago> This means a connected external power supply will backfeed the computer and that could be a recipe for damage to the port or the computer and is something we had known about causing issues over 20 years ago, yet we’ve still got designs with this issue today. On the other hand it's useful for space constrained embedded projects. I got a small outdoor enclosure for a Pi Zero, to which two RTL-SDR sticks are attached - too much to supply via the Pi's USB-OTG power rail alone. With the Adafruit microUSB OTG hub [1], I now only have one power supply going into the hub that backfeeds the Pi Zero... one cable less. [1] https://www.amazon.de/dp/B0DBMXCTRG https://www.amazon.de/dp/B0DBMXCTRG
- jamesnorden 4mo agoThere's a lot of "USB 3.0 hubs" on the market that have only one 3.0 port, I went back and forth buying/returning a lot on Amazon before giving up on getting one that had all 3.0 ports.
- jadbox 4mo agoWhat do you recommend?
- brcmthrowaway 4mo agoThey left us hanging.
- jamesnorden 4mo agoThere was actually one I managed to find on Aliexpress, out of all places, that turned out to be legit. It looked like that, I can't guarantee they're all created the same though, also it has RGB lights for some reason. https://ae01.alicdn.com/kf/S6b270a53da9b4179af73036c5f6f9c897.jpg https://ae01.alicdn.com/kf/S6b270a53da9b4179af73036c5f6f9c89...
- MegaDeKay 4mo agoYep. I bought one of these intentionally for that reason. The USB port on my Kobo Clara HD stopped working one day after I hadn't used it in a wile. Couldn't connect to it via my PC or my laptop. I did a bit of research and realized the Kobo I had won't work on a USB 3.0 connection, and that I had upgraded my PC and my laptop (all equipped with fancy smanchy USB 3.0 port) since I'd last used the Kobo.
- rickdeckard 4mo agoMy first thought whenever I come across such a badly-engineered no-name device is "oh great, another bad reference design which will poison the pool of all the available devices out there" It helps a bit to spot and avoid that exact exterior design, but often those devices are designed to reuse the same mold as more-expensive ones and/or keep changing the design based on the purchasing customer. So you end up on AliExpress looking at 5 identical hubs, but the cheapest one may have a different PCB inside. Or you look at 5 different hubs, with all of them having the same PCB inside...
- avhception 4mo ago"Ah, that's Rev. B, yeah, known problem..." Like I could somehow buy by PCB rev. Sometimes they even swap entire controllers within the same Rev.
- rickdeckard 4mo agoThat's the point, the dimension is "yeah, the ODM also offers a 2 USD cheaper hub that uses a USB2.0 controller for 7 of the 8 ports", and now you're browsing a list of equally looking products spanning 5 to 15 USD without a clue which of the straws you're going to pull...
- dowonseo 4mo agoI always think cables, hubs, and docks should be reliable ones even if they cost more Otherwise they become the weakest links in your setup
- tclancy 4mo agoWell sure, but how to tell before you buy them?
- wazoox 4mo agoI have one (ANKER IIRC?) that looks very much like this, but with two-position buttons that actually cut power, and USB3.0 level connection on all ports I tried. Also comes with the proper power supply for the barrel power connector. I suppose this one is a knock-off of mine :D
- fudged71 4mo agoI trust Anker and yet I recently got a phone charger where the USB wall adapter was a dud
- chromehearts 4mo agoI think that I have the same exact USB hub. I personally don't care about the USB 3.0 issue mentioned because it's only used to charge some devices. I think it's a controller charging station, a radio charging station, wireless charging station and a small device for rechargable batteries
- slipperybeluga 4mo ago[dead]
- teepo 4mo ago[flagged]
- ajross 4mo agoWhat's interesting to me is the part of this design that isn't junk: the single wired-through-to-the-host USB3 port. Why don't more hubs do this? I'd love to have access to a cheap port expander that lets me plug my junk in without losing access to the high speed port on the laptop. But no one sells that. You get a full USB3 hub, which is mostly wasteful for an input dongle or UART adapter, or a USB2 one that forces you to juggle stuff around when you need to plug in a thumb drive.
- alexious-sh 4mo agoOMG, websites that don't properly render in modern browsers still exist in 2026, when you don't even need a human to create it.
- bigfishrunning 4mo agoIt's wordpress; it renders well on firefox anyway.
- low_tech_punk 4mo agoIt's a classic scam. It is a 3.0 USB 7-Port Hub, not a 7-port USB 3.0 Hub. The number 3.0 is the model number of the hub, not the protocol.
- happosai 4mo agoAh like the roller bearing manufacturer established in the town of Ball, so the company could be called BALL BEARING.
- mark-r 4mo agoI heard a story long ago when it was Japan, not China who was the source of cheap garbage. The town of Usa, Japan got a lot of manufacturing so they could all say "MADE IN USA".
- hexagonwin 4mo agofunny, but it seems false. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/made-in-usa/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/made-in-usa/
- mark-r 4mo agoIt was such an amusing story I never thought to double check it. I'm sure I first heard it before Snopes existed. Thanks.
- Capitanai 4mo ago[flagged]
- kj4ips 4mo agoThe trend of slapping two STT 4-port hubs together is so common, that even name-brand hubs for reputable brands are often this, including the back feed issues. I purchased hubs form a solar-named company, and one that has a similar name to a large US department store, and they were cascaded 4port, STT, ganged overcurrent and switching. I've started buying PCBAs from Ali, where the vendor advertises the exact chip set in use. It's often cheaper than domestic options. Listings for assembled hubs (whether ali or domestic) almost never include information about the hub's actual characteristics, unless you're looking at a 300+ hub sold to audiophiles. I'd really like a source for a true 7p hub, with MTT, proper power, per-port overcurrent and power switching, but I can't seem to find one, especially since vendors tend to rev b2c products with no notice (one of the name-brand ones I bought had been downcosted shortly before I bought it).
- yborg 4mo agoWhy not name the sellers?
- wlesieutre 4mo agoI have no idea what the solar named brand is, but maybe the department-store-like one is Targus?
- belkinpower 4mo agoStarTech, probably?
- avidiax 4mo agoOne of the hopes I have for AI is that products like this become almost unsellable. Gemini strongly disrecommends buying this product[1], but it's not clear if the opinion is based on Dr. Gough's review in-part. This, of course, leads to another arms race where listings like this will be "AI optimized". They may have prompt injections, or simply specifically claim that issues like backfeeding are resolved when they are not. And it also makes the AI companies an arbiter of what products are marketable. [1] https://share.gemini.google/q2ujmGU7UgeS https://share.gemini.google/q2ujmGU7UgeS
- devmor 4mo agoWhy on earth do you think an LLM would be capable of detecting problems with a listing like that without a human doing so first? LLMs are just as gameable as SEO, if not more so.
- aidenn0 4mo agoUSB 3.0 Hubs have always been pretty "meh" for me. I think the quality control, even on name brands, is poor.
- PaulHoule 4mo agoIt's the spec. "It just doesn't work" whether or not the hardware or software is good quality.
- PaulHoule 4mo agoI haven't seen a USB 3.0 hub that I've liked, and I've paid top dollar. USB 1.0 had a model where you really could enumerate 127 devices attached to a hub. The USB 3.0 makes no promises for what should be possible with hubs and if you actually try it you find that at some point plugging in a new device makes other devices drop out. Like I've never been able to plug 7 devices into a 7 port hub.
- aghuang 4mo agoWow, thats very informative. This also tells you that cheap knockoffs can also be deadly if the circuity is poor.
- BobbyTables2 4mo agoPassing the USB3 wires to a single port is quite sneaky!