EgoIggo USB-C Hub silver silver

With the never-ending advancement of technology and tech companies who are more focussed on the aesthetics of devices rather than their functionality and convenience - yeah, I’m looking at you, Apple - we now find ourselves faced with the latest trend in laptops; the ubiquitous ‘Ultrabook’, which all of the big gadget companies are scrambling to sell to all and sundry.Not content with merely reducing the amount of ports on them to a measly two or three at the most, many of these companies decided that it would be fun to rub salt into the wound by making these ports USB-C ones, and can I have a head count of how many of you reading this actually own a single USB-C device other than, quite possibly, your smartphone? Yep, just as I thought; not one of you!Of course, I’m saying this from experience after my partner recently came home with a Shiny new Ultrabook under her arm. All was fine and dandy until I had a good look at the Ultrabook and discovered that it had just one (yes, you did read that correctly) USB-C port on it that doubles as it’s charging port. Rather inevitably, it took barely an hour of her playing with her newly acquired ultrabook before she decided that she wanted to plug her wireless mouse into it and, lo and behold, couldn’t do this as the dongle for her mouse has a USB-A connector on it!After much gnashing of teeth, I suggested that we have a look for a USB-C adapter that would give her ultrabook the ‘normal’ amount of ports that a laptop should have and, after looking at quite a few of them, settled on this one from QacQoc as it had three USB-A ports on it, a Micro-SD slot, a normal SD card slot, an ethernet port, an HDMI-out port and, critically, a single USB-C port which also acted as a DC-in port for charging ultrabooks. It was almost as if this thing was designed for the Zenbook 3! We did gulp at a bit at the £66 price tag, but it was less than half price so we decided to go halfers on it and duly clicked on the ‘Buy’ button.>>>>>>WHAT’S IN THE BOX?As is always the case, the USB-C hub arrived the very next day once again thanks to Amazon Prime, so I removed its box from the packaging, slid the cardboard slip off it and opened the box. Inside, the job itself is nicely presented in a foam insert and, once lifted off, there’s a separate compartment below that which contains a velvety pouch for storing the hub in and a set of instructions.>>>>>>FIRST IMPRESSSIONS?While I can hardly describe it as an attractive item, the actual hub itself a nice feeling thing which is fairly lightweight and made out of a very smooth metal (aluminium, presumably). It’s capped at either end with white plastic, which terminates on one end to a high quality short cable and USB-C connector for plugging it into USB-C-equipped devices and around the other edges of the device are the ports I mentioned above.>>>>>>PLUG AND PRAYOf course, the very first thing I did once I’d removed it from its box was to plug it into the Ultrabook, which prompted Windows 10 to make it’s little bleepy-boop noise to notify me that the device had been detected and displayed on the screen that it was installing the device drivers for the hub. So far so good. I then plugged the USB-C charger into the connector on the end of the hub and was pleased to see that the charging symbol appeared over the battery in the corner of the screen.Finally, I plugged dongle for my partner’s mouse into one of the USB-A ports on the hub, the mouse was detected and began to work immediately - hurrah! My partner was obviously delighted as she’s not fond of touchpads and much prefers to use a mouse! When plugged in, one corner of the hub glows blue to let you know that it’s on and working.>>>>>>CONNECTIONS GALORE!Since that initial joyous moment of realisation that her new Ultrabook now has a decent amount of connectivity for things, I’ve had a chance to check out the functionality of the other ports on it and am happy to report that they all work perfectly, without having to install extra device drivers or anything. The HDMI-out port works great when connected to our TV, all the USB-A ports work perfectly even when all three are in use and both the Micro and ‘Normal’ SD card slots work great, which are both mounted automatically and displayed as drives in Windows. Finally, there’s the Ethernet port, which is a bit of an anomaly in today’s Wi-Fi-filled world, but there are certainly scenarios where these things can come in handy (installing corporate builds of Windows on Ultrabooks, for example) and I was able to get the Ultrabook connecting to the internet via a wired connection to our router, so it all works absolutely perfectly!Of course, this device should also be compatible with MacBooks equipped with USB-C ports as well as devices running distributions of Linux such as Ubuntu or Mint.>>>>>>SUMMING UPWell, there’s not a great deal else to say about a USB-C hub, to be honest - but it’s definitely worth pointing out that this is an incredibly high quality and nicely manufactured bit of kit that is capable of turning a Ultrabook that’s very light on connectivity into a device that has the ‘normal’ amount of ports that I would expect on a laptop, so the relatively high price tag is definitely warranted, especially when taking into consideration the prices that some manufacturer’s (Apple, for instance) charge for their accessories - which actually makes this particular hub represent decent bang for the buck.Most importantly from my perspective, my other half is now delighted that her shiny new ultrabook is more usable than it was before and that she can plug several USB devices into it simultaneously - which makes me a happy chappy as I’m not getting griped at about it!Perfect!

After trying a couple of other hubs, I decided to spend a bit extra and get this one with the extra connections. It works very well and has a great range of connections. I'll not go into detail about them as you can see from the spec as to what they are, but in terms of operation, they all work well and I've had no issues. I also have a powered USB 3.0 hub plugged into one of the USB ports on it and that has increased the amount of USB points even more, and there is no issues or conflicts. As others have mentioned, it does heat up quite a bit, although for me/our climate here in Northern Ireland, it isn't an issue! It seems sturdy and well made, and it slim, sleek and looks good. I have mine running with a Samsung Galaxy Book and it's an invaluable addition.

Firstly, I like this product it works very well is highly function and is great as a substitute for my MBP's non-IO.It's well built and feels good, it comes with it's own case although I can't help feeling a pang of discomfort when I hear the USB-C connecting touching the body of the dongle.I've had no real performance issues as the things I'm running through it tend to consume a fair bit of power, but not enough to justify buying a powered one. I've had a squeal, come from the dongle after using all three of the USB-B ports, which is a little disconcerting but I was using a hard drive and two iLoks. I'm not sure if this is typical behaviour but that's about the only negative I can find. It runs a little hot over time, but I wouldn't expect it to be any different.I suggest that if you are looking to connect many different devices that require an awful lot of power, go buy a powered hub rather than this. It's a great product to replace you're entire inbuilt IO into one small hub.

HDMI output is useless when used with any of my Dell 24" monitors, large areas of the screen are peppered with spurious red pixels and occasional flickering fine red lines. The USB ports and Ethernet work fine, but then you would hope so on such an expensive device! Would not recommend this device, for this money I would expect exceptional performance, but it's just a bit rubbish. Too late for me to return it as I purchased it over a year ago, so the only place for it to go now is in the bin.