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Sebastian Erik photo
United Kingdom, Belfast
1 Level
774 Review
47 Karma

Review on πŸ”Œ LOBKIN USB C Hub for MacBook Pro/Air - USB C to USB A Adapter with 3 USB Ports - Multiport Dongle for Mac Accessories by Sebastian Erik

Revainrating 4 out of 5

Cheap but works

Works mostly as advertised. It's incredibly cheaply made, the USB 3.0 socket is only held to the board by soldered data pins, and the outer metal casing of the USB 3.0 socket isn't even grounded when it should be. All other ports have only one solder connection. This would make this hub quite brittle and very prone to wear and tear, just to save pennies on soldering I wouldn't be surprised if people broke it just by plugging and unplugging devices regularly. The way the USB 3.0 port works like hell is that the microcontroller basically lies about its device descriptor, claiming it's USB 3.0 compliant, and then superspeed lanes just go straight through hoping , that there really is a USB 3.0 compatible device on the other side. This means that the handshake will fail if there is no USB 3.0 device on the other end. Basically, it means you can't hot-plug USB 3.0 devices when you need USB 3.0 speed. You must first connect a USB 3.0 device to a hub, and then connect the hub to your computer to achieve USB 3.0 speeds. The microcontroller seems to handle the USB 2.0 switching quite well, I got the expected USB 2.0 speeds with this hub. I'm going to use this USB hub for an electronics project and it actually fits my needs perfectly as it's pretty cheap so overall I'm happy with it. Just a warning about questionable quality, although you seem to get what you pay for. (Added photo without hub shell to show finish of board)

Pros
  • Finally bought
Cons
  • Long wait