REVIEW: Chenbro USB 2.0 High-Speed 7-Port Hub with LEDs

Geeks.com supplied us with a USB 2.0 High-Speed 7-Port Hub made by Chenbro for the purposes of this review. For just $13 you get 7 ports and USB 2.0 speeds. Not a bad deal, but read through for our review.

The package includes the actual USB hub and the (somewhat short) USB cable that connects to your computer. Installation is very easy and the device is automatically recognized. We tried the hub with Windows XP, Linux and Mac OS X and it was recognized by all three operating systems without any problems. The hub has 5 ports on its front and 2 on the back. It also has a standard jack to accept an external power supply (must be purchased seperately).

We found the speed of the hub pretty good, even when it was loaded with USB devices. We were able to copy files in the range of 4 MBs/sec from our external card reader over to our hard drive (speed of the flash card itself must also be taken into account here).

The hub looks really nice, it has a nice shiny silver industrial design. It also has LEDs for all its 7 ports (plus a red one when it has power). However, we found that the LEDs will all light up at all times and not when you plug a device to a specific port! Another problem we had was with its occasional stability. At least in 2 occasions we had to remove its power, let it stand for 5 seconds, and then re-connect it to make all USB devices work as expected again. We don't know if the problem can be identified in the hub itself though or on a buggy USB device.

Overall, this is a bargain! For a 7-port high-speed hub you would usually pay over $20, but Geeks.com offer it for $13. In this day and age where computer users acquire more and more USB devices (from flash readers to even external TV cards!), having 1-2 multi-port speedy hubs around is a must. And at this price, it's a steal!

Overall Rating: 8/10