A compact four-port USB 3.0 hub from Ugreen

Since a USB hub is a very simple device and there isn't much to say about it, this review will be quite short: a look around, a teardown, and a few tests.

The device comes in a fairly large box sealed in plastic wrap.


The back is covered in Chinese text that isn't particularly useful to our readers, though it does include some technical specifications.
As I mentioned, the box is quite large. In my opinion, it could easily be half the size, which would reduce both the packaging cost and the shipping cost built into the price.


The contents are as simple as they get: the hub itself, a manual, and a warranty card. Since absolutely everything is in Chinese, only the hub is of any interest.


Having the ports on the front was the key thing for me. Hubs with ports on the side, top, or even back are common, but front-facing ports are quite rare.
That said, they did put one port on top after all. Since the top port is exposed to dust, it's best to use it for something.


The hub is quite compact, measuring 77x50x20 mm, and its case is made of fairly sturdy plastic.
The hub has a fixed cable, which is 1 meter long in all versions.


There's also a version with an OTG connector for connecting to tablets and smartphones.
But since I needed the hub for stationary use, I went with the regular version.


1. Three ports are on the front, with another one centered on top of the case. There's also a hole on top for the power indicator LED. It isn't very bright, which is a good thing: in my setup, the hub sits at eye level next to the monitor, and a bright LED would be very annoying.
2. I've already seen reviews of this hub, but this updated version has one significant difference: it uses a microUSB power connector instead of the round one used before. I find this quite convenient, since you can easily connect a regular power adapter from a tablet or smartphone.
3. No complaints about the connectors: both the ones on the hub and the ones on the cable look quite neat.
4. There are four small feet on the bottom, but they're completely pointless. The device is very light, and the cable isn't exactly flexible, so the whole thing slides around the desk however it likes.


The construction is quite sturdy. In addition to the screw on the bottom, the two halves of the case are held together by several fairly strong clips, so I'm not quite sure why the screw is needed as well.


Everything looks quite neat, and I have no complaints.


The second difference is less obvious: the chip is on the bottom rather than the top. At least in the OTG version I saw reviewed, it was on top of the board.


1. It uses the well-known GL3520. Incidentally, my previous hub used exactly the same chip, and I had no complaints about it.
2. The chip that stores the firmware is on the other side of the board.
3. The hub's chip is powered by a small switching voltage regulator.
4. Protection is provided by a resettable fuse rated at 2.6 A. It protects all the ports at once, so you can put a 2.6 A load on one port, or 650 mA on each of the four. I sometimes use the hub to charge my smartphone.


A side-by-side comparison of three hub designs. On the left is the one I tried to use; on the right is a Dlink hub, whose port layout works well for me; and in the middle is the one under review.


Since this hub doesn't come with a power supply (which may be for the best), I adapted a Dlink power supply for it using a piece of cable with a microUSB connector and a terminal-block socket. I also got to try out my new crimping tool :)


At first I was disappointed about the port on top of the case, since it was bound to collect dust, but things worked out even better than I expected. I keep a Bluetooth adapter plugged into the hub all the time. It's a long one, but then I remembered I also had a tiny adapter. I plugged it into the top port, and it couldn't have worked out better.


I also discovered another nice feature: the spacing between the front ports is greater than on the Dlink hub. It may seem like a small detail, 20 or 24 mm, but it makes working with devices that have nonstandard case widths noticeably easier—for example, a card reader and a WiFi adapter.


Now for the tests. The hub chip is used in many devices, so I’m unlikely to get results that differ from those of other hubs, but a review is a review.
First, a test with an external hard drive, using 1 GB and 32 GB test files.


For the next test, I checked how a fast flash drive in the card reader and an external hard drive performed at the same time.


Since running two benchmarks simultaneously isn’t entirely representative, I tested simultaneous reads from the flash drive and hard drive instead. There was practically no drop in speed, with a combined throughput of about 200 MB/s.


When copying from the flash drive to the external hard drive, the speed dropped considerably. In this mode, the hard drive activity light blinked continuously, while the flash drive worked in short bursts that coincided with each new file being opened (the files being copied were 600–800 MB each).


The hub only gave up when I tried reading from the flash drive while writing to the hard drive at the same time. Reading from the flash drive was fast (on the right), but the write speed to the drive (on the left) dropped considerably.


Worse still, once the read operation finished, the write speed didn’t recover and remained low.
This is admittedly a rather hypothetical test, and it’s rare to encounter this in real life. Still, if you want to get it done faster, it’s quicker to copy the file to your computer first and then write it wherever you need it.


Brief summary.
Advantages
Convenient, sturdy design and port layout
Good speed
microUSB port for power input.
One-meter cable included
Good spacing between ports.

Disadvantages
Non-detachable cable
Speed can drop considerably in some situations
The top port is exposed to dust.

My take: If you can overlook the speed drop when reading and writing at the same time, this is a perfectly decent hub otherwise. I personally liked having the ports on the front, although I was skeptical about having one port on top.
The microUSB power input is quite convenient. By the way, I can already hear the question: can you connect the hub to a computer this way? No—the port is for power only, nothing else.

That’s all. I hope you found the review useful.