USB continues to be the answer to connectivity and charging for PCs, Consumer Electronics, Display and Mobile architectures. It is a fast, bidirectional, low-cost, dynamically attachable interface that is consistent with the requirements of the PC platforms of today and tomorrow. Improved data encoding for more efficient data transfer leading to higher through-put and improved I/O power efficiency If you're using an external storage device – perhaps an NVMe drive you've put in one of the best SSD enclosures– you’d benefit a great deal from using a hub that supports 10 Gbps connections – alternatively known as USB 3.1 Gen 2 or USB 3.2 Gen 2. Unfortunately, very few USB hubs actually support these higher speeds and even fewer still support the 10 Gbps speed when it comes from a Type-A, rather than a Type-C, port.

Any extra connectivity? Some USB-C hubs will come with HDMI out, allowing you to connect to a monitor, provided that your PC can output video from its Type-C port. Other hubs have microSD or SD card readers built-in. Similar to the Sabrent HB-U3CR, the Atolla delivered 1.2 amps at 4.8 volts on our power test and it charged our phone at 4.78 volts and 1.35 watts. The Atolla hub also offered similar performance to other hubs; we detected no slowdowns when copying files with our test SSD. If you have a USB 3.2 Gen 2 port and want to take advantage of its 10 Gbps speed, look for a cable that supports 10 Gbps (it could be USB 3.2 Gen 2 or USB 3.1 Gen 2) and a peripheral that does the same. If you want to get 20 Gbps speeds, all three pieces: the port, the peripheral and the cable, must support that speed. What Can I Do with USB 3.2 or USB 3.1? USB Type-C has plenty of perks, and with one of the USB Type-C hubs you might be considering getting, you'll be able to copy files at USB 3.1 speeds, deliver enough power to charge a laptop, or use Alt Mode to send other types of data using DisplayPort or Thunderbolt 3connections. Some USB-C hubs go further by incorporating USB-PD passthrough. Here the idea isn’t so much to power the connected devices as to power the laptop the hub connects to, so that you just connect the laptop to the hub, and it charges as you use it without the charger taking up the spare USB-C port. The key thing here is how much power the hub can supply. Most will deliver 80W or more when used with a 100W charger, which should more than cover any laptop. However, with some you’re looking at 50W or less, which might mean missing out on fast-charging modes on some of those laptops that support them.

Specifications

This UGreen unit is another basic USB hub, with four USB 3.0/3.1 Gen 1 ports connecting through a single USB-A connection. Disappointingly, what looks like an aluminium casing turns out to be plastic, which feels a little creaky in comparison to some models, but it’s robust enough for daily desktop or mobile use. The big advantage this one has over similarly priced rivals is a 5V micro-USB input, meaning it can charge devices while in use (without any fast charge support) and run one or more USB SSDs or HDDs – we tried it with one of each without any issues. The only downside? You’ll need to supply your own charger and cable, but it’s hard to grumble at this price. Technically speaking, neither USB 3.2 nor USB 3.1 by itself can deliver video. Using DisplayLink technology, one can convert and compress video into USB data that goes out to a specially-enabled hub or portable monitor. However, few people today use DisplayLink devices.

All MacBooks and many of the best Ultrabooks come with only USB-C ports, and just a couple of them. That’s why there are so many portable USB hubs that connect to a computer via a built-in USB-C cable and then provide a few Type-A ports, along with some extra goodies such as an HDMI out or a card reader. Anker’s PowerExpand 4-in-1 USB-C hub has one whiz-bang feature we haven’t seen anywhere else, and that’s a built-in 256GB SSD. We also did power testing on every powered USB hub. To see just how much electricity the ports could deliver, we connected a MakerHawk Electronic Load Tester to the hub and tried to dial up as many amps as we could. As we dial up amps on any device, the voltage drops, so a 5 volt USB port could drop down to 4 volts or less as we increase the load, but USB devices need close to 5 volts – 4.7 or 4.8 volts is usually enough – so we tested how many amps we could get at 4.8 volts and at the, likely unacceptable, rate of 4.05 volts. In addition to the SSD, the Anker PowerExpand has an HDMI out port and two USB 3.x Type-A ports that operate at 5 Gbps. There’s a USB-C power pass-through you can plug your laptop’s power adapter – up to a 100-watt unit – so that you can charge your computer while using this hub (the USB-C port does not work for data transfer; we tried).

Tired of switching plugs in and out of sockets or looking for an easier way to connect? Splash out on one of the best USB hubs to buy

Power pass-through: All the hubs we considered also have a USB-C port that allows you to plug in your charger without taking up a second port on the computer itself (if it even has a second port). USB-C supports power at up to 100 watts, while laptops take anywhere from 30 watts (for a small machine such as the MacBook Air) to 45 watts (for many midrange laptops, as Chromebooks tend to be) to 97 watts (for the 16-inch MacBook Pro). We’ve found the Power tab in macOS’s System Report to accurately report the wattage of the power source, and in our tests we compared the figures stated there against what each company advertised.

Not every USB Hub is one of the best USB hubs you can buy. We tested a number of other models that are worth considering, but not necessarily at the head of the class. Output ports: Make sure you get enough ports to attach the number of devices you’re likely to need. Most USB hubs have at least 3, more often 4, output ports, but at your desk, you may need a lot more than that. Also, consider whether you are attaching any USB-C devices (most output ports on hubs are Type-A).

Package Contents

Upstream connection (Type-A or Type-C?): USB hubs have multiple downstream ports to connect to your devices but only one upstream connector, which could be a port but is often a built-in wire that connects to your computer. Many laptops, including a lot of the best Ultrabooks, only have USB-C ports, so your hub's upstream connector would have to be Type-C. Unlike cheaper hubs, it supports a full 60Hz refresh rate over HDMI, while there’s a Gigabit Ethernet RJ-45 port for when you need a physical network connection. The Type-C and Type-A connections could be faster, with our SSD speeds limited to around 458MB/sec, but this is a great, fully featured hub that’s still affordable and – most importantly – it just works. Obviously, you want USB3+ for anything data intensive. Apart from the speed, it has the added advantage that it's full duplex, so data can flow simultaneously in both directions, like on Ethernet networks or PCIe.