A short story of me trying out different USB-C hubs, taking them apart, and slowly descending into madness.

I was looking for a new USB-c hub and came across this article. It’s an interesting write-up of what is on the inside of some popular options

    • rentar42@kbin.social
      10·
      1 year ago

      Note that the last hub inspected in the Article is a Anker product which also seems to be rebranded one from another third-party producer. It has some better components, but nothing fundamentally better about it.

    • Otter@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      5·
      1 year ago

      Thank you! I had an Anker hub in the past, but had some trouble with the Ethernet dropping when using it heavily (ex. during a zoom meeting or when moving large files). I’m not sure if that was an Anker issue or just something with hubs in general. I’m still open to another Anker one, but I was looking for other options as well

      • jjakc@lemthony.comEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        We use UGREEN ones at work, and they seem to do the job well so far. 100W PD, HDMI and ethernet working well.

        • highduc@lemmy.mlEnglish
          3·
          1 year ago

          I have a small Ugreen I bought a few years ago and while I’m not using it anymore it did its job well while I needed it and afaik it still works well. Initially I got it for the detachable usb-c cable.

          And I think it’s authentically Chinese, doesn’t pretend to be a German company or anything like that.

        • aRei@kbin.social
          3·
          1 year ago

          +1 for ugreen hubs. The one I bought last 2018 still works though it has a quirk when I plug it on my XPS 13, the USB mouse and mech keyboard stops responding periodically until I replug it. This happens after every first plug.

        • lenathaw@lemmy.mlEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          +1 for UGREEN. My workplace uses them for everything, I’ve used many of their products over the years and they work great.

          • jjakc@lemthony.comEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            Everyone can have duds, it’s how they handle it. I’ve found their support to be good.

    • lenathaw@lemmy.mlEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Anker is a great brand for anything power related (chargers, cables, batteries, etc). Everything else, not so much

    • themoonisacheese@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Anker is in fact mentionned in that article as the resell products from china company that it is. You might be going “there’s nothing wrong with that” since they do have additional staff and put in work for aditionnal quality control, but ultimately their products aren’t really better than shovel hardware you can find on AliExpress.

      (Note that the autho basically only has a problem because he uses a Mac and the realtek chip in all those cheap (actually $100 when dropshipped to you nice) hubs says it’s Mac compatible but it isn’t.