Home > Consumer Reviews > Cables To Go 7 Port USB 2.0 Hub

This is the best USB hub I've ever dealt with. It looks great and works wonderfully. The squashed oval shape is eye-catching and sleek. The color is a matte black with silver trim around the ports and the end caps. The casing has a subtle grain to it and looks more like painted wood than plastic. It just does not look like a cheap piece of plastic. The base it sits on is metal with just enough heft to stay in place on the desk and includes 2 predrilled holes in the bottom and 2 screws if you want to attach it to a desk.

In normal operation the hub slides lengthwise onto the base and sits very snugly so it feels like one piece. It slides easily off in either direction to become a mobile hub for a laptop also. Being round and feather-light it is easy to grab and chuck in a laptop bag. And without the base it still sits nicely because of a slight base to the hub which is the part that normally locks into the base.

Performance-wise, it rocks. I plugged it into my laptop and it was ready to go 3 seconds later. I plugged in my ipod, which immediately started to sync. I normally have a printer, external USB hard drive, and an ipod sitting on it with operation as seamless and fast as when plugged directly into the laptop.

Another great thing about this hub is the spacing of ports. There are 3 on one side with about 2 centimeters between each plug. There are 4 on the other side along with the AC adapter and mini-USB plug that connects it to the laptop, so these are somewhat closer together but still enough room for normal size USB plugs to sit adjacent to each other.

I looked long and hard to find a hub that had good plug spacing, could possibly function as a mobile hub (with or without a power adapter on the road), and was fairly light. This hub is all of those things, and it looks great as well.

This is a solid, well built device, unlike most plasticky flimsy ones I've had. A few things to note:

1. As others have said, the blue light is really bright. It's so bright, in fact, it hurts my eyes (and they aren't particularly sensitive), if I look directly at it. I actually like it, as it allows me to shut off all of the other lights in my office and leave the room while my computer shuts down without walking into a wall. It's that bright.
2. I ran 6 different devices off of this, all at once, to see if the number of devices reduced the performance of any devices. It didn't. THey all did great. I did this with the AC power connected, and I assume that that is required. I did't test it with just the USB cable hooked up.
3. It comes with a USB A to mini B plug, not a standard A to B plug. That means that the 10 foot USB cable I bought for it before it arrived didn't work. I found a little adapter, which cost me $10. If you're buying a cable for this, be sure to buy one that is USB A to mini B.
4. Finally, the hub slides too easily in the metal frame. It should lock into place somehow, but doesn't. That's a pretty big flaw, IMO. To solve it, I just put some foam double sided sticky tape between the two parts, and left the paper on one side so the two pieces would slide together (with much force). Now it's tightly locked into place, and I will never need to loosen it. Should not have to do that, though, so that's why I gave it four stars instead of five.

It's an outsanding hub, and I recommend it, subject to the above.

Operates exactly as advertised.

This product is not generally available outside of Amazon. And the price is right.

I use it, permanently attached, on the underside of my home-made laptop desk. This way I can merely unhook one single USB connection on the PC in order to disconnect the several backup HDD's, Palm cradle, etc. when the laptop must serve as a portable. Saves wear and tear on the other three USB ports on the computer - which, ofcourse are free and available. I also have a USB cable dangling from one of the ports on the HUB - for the heck of it.....er, for the cameral or GPS or whatever may need to be hooked up.

Nope, no installation required since WinXP (Home) has the necessary drivers. Its straight Plug 'N Play.

The subtle blue LED light is a nice touch; in my case the light reflectts off the light colored carpet since the hub, as I mentioned, is installed upside-down on the underside of my work table.

The 110V transformer helps power all the USB connections, alleviating power draw off the PC.

A very wwll designed, useful gizmo.

After a couple of months the power connector became intermittent. Wiggling it sometimes helped. Apparently I am not the only one who has had this problem and I attribute it to poor quality control of either the socket or its soldering to the circuit board This part takes a lot of stress as the power cord is plugged in and out of the hub, and needs to be strengthened.

The problem can be detected by removing the USB connector to the computer, to be sure you are running on the hub's own power, and then wiggling the power plug on the hub and watching the blue power light. Often it will be off as soon as the computer is disconnected, and wiggling it reveals the intermittent nature of the problem.

I won't dwell on the negatives other users have express only to repeat that the "blue light" is waaaaaay too bright and should shut off when the computer is powered down. It seems you can avoid the problem by not using the included AC adapter but I think an AC adapter makes the hub more universally useful. I agree with others that the fact that the unit slides freely into the included mounting base is just plain silly. The manufacturer missed the obvious necessity to have some sort of click lock. Without it, the base is pretty useless. Also a little silly to include two tiny machine screws instead of wood screws. Exactly what did they think we were going to screw those into? I will add a negative I haven't seen from other users, which is the tasteless writing printed all over the unit. Why? After I buy something I don't need advertising messages. I am tempted to paint the hub with black spray paint. Do be aware that, unlike most hubs, this one uses a mini-usb connector to the computer. An adapter cable is included but it is not industry standard. As far as performance, it runs circles around my recent model Belkin hub that went over the deep end. I like the design of 4 rear and 3 front ports. Now if only the manufacturer understood their customers a little better.