Recently I having been trying to re-organise my desk space and update things. My old keyboard had given up after a mere ten years or so of service and my mouse was getting on a bit too. When your N key stops working reliably it does make it somewhat tricky to play games or write without constantly having to correct yourself. I’m a big fan of wireless technology so I’ve upgraded to a Logitech K520 Keyboard and M310 mouse which came as a set. I’ll review those separately.

It was fine on my desk in the living room though. The problem now was that today’s devices are much more power hungry. I have a Hudl 2 Android tablet which is notoriously bad at power consumption. You can’t really expect that much from a tablet produced by a supermarket chain. However it’s been pretty good for the price and suits my needs. If they hadn’t cancelled the line I’d certainly have upgraded to the Hudl 3 when it came out. My feeble little USB hub of glowing horror couldn’t really provide the juice for this tablet or even my aged Galaxy S5 though. All this is a long way of getting to the important point, why on earth would you pay for a big USB hub? Do you really need such a thing? In short, yes, yes you do.

Identifying my requirements and confirming what’s available

I wanted to have my cake and eat it, getting everything I really needed for the best price. Preferably without an insomnia causing LED attached (it’s for my desk in the living room but that could change in the future). First, then I did some research into the various types of USB, power requirements and data transfer speeds and so on. I needed to work out what requirements I actually had, what did I genuinely need out of this device, what would I like, which features were negotiable. I like to know that I’m getting value for money and that always has to start with making sure you’re only paying for the features you need. For instance, I don’t need some gigantic device that would charge twenty tablets at once.

Let’s get this out of the way first. Data transfer and power increases with each generation of USB. You always want the most recent version if you can but there’s always backwards compatibility with older versions so it’s not really worth worrying about it, you just need a cable of the right type so make sure you pack the right ones when you travel.

I’m not going to go into the differences between all the types of USB and the connectors, there’s plenty of articles that do a much better job than I could of explaining the differences.

Power Requirements

Most of my devices are USB 3. Some were having trouble charging adequately or at all with USB 2 power sources. The newest version of USB 3.1 can supply huge amounts of power but that’s really for the future so that it can supply things like monitors. You won’t need it for your phone or external hard drive. As long as you can get USB 3 levels of power and data transfer that should be sufficient to make your life easier. Of course, this article is being written in November 2016. Sooner or later it’ll be out of date and you’ll want a faster connector and more power for some devices. I just don’t think it’s worth being an early adopter on this issue unless you’ve got true power user requirements (as in, you’re trying to transfer massive video files from PC to hard drive on a regular basis).

I knew that I wanted to be able to charge my devices but that I also wanted to be able to plug in my phone and tablet to transfer small amounts of data and my hard drive for backup purposes. However, that could be accomplished by a data hub and a powered hub that are separate. In my bedroom, I have an Anker hub that just supplies power for charging. That’s on my bedside cabinet and it’s where my phone and tablet get charged overnight. I have nice long cables on it so I can lie in bed watching Netflix on my tablet, wondering why I’m doing that as there’s no position that doesn’t result in me hurting my back. I also have a USB fan that’s plugged in which is nice and quiet and offers good cooling in a room that’s ridiculously hot.

I looked into whether there were similar devices I could get, perhaps a cheap one with fewer ports. If I could get a small power hub and a small data hub that could be quite handy as I could then take the data hub travelling with me slightly more easily.

However, I couldn’t find any combination which made sense in terms of space on my desk, weight and most importantly, cost. I quickly settled on a combined hub. I need to charge my tablet, my phone and my wireless headphones. It’d be helpful to be able to charge more and leave my hard drive plugged in and powered up all the time. If I make more use of that it’s nice and portable (it’s a WD Digital Passport so it’s about the size of my wallet before I empty out 5 months of receipts).

There’re all sorts of sizes and shapes of USB hubs. Some are small squares which have USB slots on several edges. That’s great if it’s going to sit in the middle of a dining room table and your family all plug their tablets into it. It’s not helpful for a desk, though.  Picture it, some of your cables face forward and some backwards. It’s a nightmare of tangling. So I knew for ease of use I really wanted all the slots facing one way.

I knew already that I’d had good experience with my existing power only Anker hub. It supplies 40 watts over 5 ports so it can charge all of my devices at top speed. When I’m buying my own tech I always go to one source – The Wirecutter. These guys have an excellent and well-deserved reputation. They write long, lab style tests that they keep updated regularly with comments about the tech they’ve recommended. They pick their favourite, they tell you why they’ve chosen it and they tell you what the best alternatives are in case you have different needs or something that came a close second is on sale. I never rely just on one site for my information, though. I’m always looking for comments that will knock down the tech I’m looking at in a helpful manner. Other users are a great source of real-world experience as they’ll sometimes point out problems they had that resonate with you. For instance, if I’d read a review of my first USB hub that said ‘It looks kind of fun but that blue LED will actually keep you awake at night if it’s in your room.’ I might have done a little more searching and picked something different.

Their reviews recommend 3 different Anker hubs that are very similar to each other. This gets a bit confusing because I bought a product Anker describe as a 7-Port USB 3.0 Data & Charging hub. It actually has 7 data/power ports and 3 additional fast charging ports for ten in total. There’s a smaller one that only has 7 ports in total, only one of which is fast charging (and does not supply as much power as the first one). Finally, there’s another with ten ports with 9 data and 1 power port. It’s important to note that the data ports DO supply power but at lower values than the fast charging points. Confused? I’m not that surprised. Suffice to say all of these can charge your devices but it’s worth picking the one that best suits your needs. The prices are pretty good and they’re all quite small. Mine is only a few millimetres longer than my phone and has plenty of room for all ten ports. I was very happy with the price, size and form factor.

Weight :105g / 3.7oz

Dimensions :145 × 44 × 22mm / 5.7 × 1.7 × 0.9in

Port :7 SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ports

Data Port Output Current :5Gbps

Charging Port Output Current :2.1A × 3

Driver :Driver not required.

Compatible :Backward compatible with USB 2.0 / 1.1

Supported System :Windows 8 / 7 / Vista / XP or Mac OS X 10.2 and above