Customer Reviews

IOGear 4 Port USB 2.0 MicroHub GUH274

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This device is as advertised, small, portable, easy to use, etc. It comes with an A/C adapter that is not required for non-bus powered devices. The adapter is useful (and necessary it appears) for bus powered external drives. It has a 3 year warrenty and is extremely reasonably priced.
There are 3 minor flaws:

1. The device does heat up as noted by the previous reviewer.

2. The uplink cable is mounted upside down, so the device sits on its back when connected to my laptop. This is minorly annoying, and I could turn it over, but I'm afraid it will cause damage to the cable.

3. This device cannot power a bus-powered device without the A/C adapter, even if its the only thing plugged into the hub. This is understandable since those devices draw nearly the entire 500mA supported by USB ports.

All in all, a decent buy, even with these minor flaws, I am very happy with it.

The first thing you notice is that this hub is impossibly small, and very cleanly designed. But once you plug it in the benefits of the size fade quickly...it gets incredibly hot very fast, probably because it is so small. It just doesn't seem like a good trade off. Go for a larger, more mainstream solution unless size is important.

I bought two of the hubs in June 2004. One of them failed in about a month of using it with a HP/Compaq Laptop. IOGEAR replaced it for me. I am now using it with a Dell Laptop and it seems to be doing fine. The other one I used with a Mac for about a year and a half now and it has failed. I am beyond warranty so I will go with a different hub to replace it. It does run hot so I think it must have good ventilation to hold up well.

Uncanny, but my hub had the same problem - mine lasted for about 1 year, but now the middle two ports don't recognize devices.

Wierd. When it worked I loved it, though.

I bought it because it looked cute and small. Used it for 7 months, and the middle 2 ports gave up. All of a sudden it wouldn't recognize the keyboard, mouse or printer with those ports.
I tried plugging in some other things, those ports can still give power to my cooling fan though.

I purchased this device because of the advertised Cypress Tetra Hub chip.

The product that arrived has an (inferior) NEC hub chip.

Why is the NEC chip inferior?

- It only has a single Transaction Translator. This means that the hub will only go as fast as the *slowest* device connected to it.
- It only supports ganged power switching. This means that you cant send a command to the hub to power off one port at a time.

I guess IOGear decided to change the product without changing the model number.

Gory, Nerdy details:

Bus 005 Device 022: ID 0409:005a NEC Corp. HighSpeed Hub
Device Descriptor:
bLength 18
bDescriptorType 1
bcdUSB 2.00
bDeviceClass 9 Hub
bDeviceSubClass 0 Unused
bDeviceProtocol 1 Single TT
bMaxPacketSize0 64
idVendor 0x0409 NEC Corp.
idProduct 0x005a HighSpeed Hub
bcdDevice 1.00
iManufacturer 0
iProduct 0
iSerial 0
bNumConfigurations 1
Configuration Descriptor:
bLength 9
bDescriptorType 2
wTotalLength 25
bNumInterfaces 1
bConfigurationValue 1
iConfiguration 0
bmAttributes 0xe0
Self Powered
Remote Wakeup
MaxPower 100mA
Interface Descriptor:
bLength 9
bDescriptorType 4
bInterfaceNumber 0
bAlternateSetting 0
bNumEndpoints 1
bInterfaceClass 9 Hub
bInterfaceSubClass 0 Unused
bInterfaceProtocol 0 Full speed (or root) hub
iInterface 0
Endpoint Descriptor:
bLength 7
bDescriptorType 5
bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN
bmAttributes 3
Transfer Type Interrupt
Synch Type None
Usage Type Data
wMaxPacketSize 0x0001 1x 1 bytes
bInterval 12
Hub Descriptor:
bLength 9
bDescriptorType 41
nNbrPorts 4
wHubCharacteristic 0x00a0
Ganged power switching
Ganged overcurrent protection
TT think time 16 FS bits
Port indicators
bPwrOn2PwrGood 0 * 2 milli seconds
bHubContrCurrent 100 milli Ampere
DeviceRemovable 0x00
PortPwrCtrlMask 0xff
Hub Port Status:
Port 1: 0000.0100 power
Port 2: 0000.0100 power
Port 3: 0000.0100 power
Port 4: 0000.0100 power
Device Qualifier (for other device speed):
bLength 10
bDescriptorType 6
bcdUSB 2.00
bDeviceClass 9 Hub
bDeviceSubClass 0 Unused
bDeviceProtocol 0 Full speed (or root) hub
bMaxPacketSize0 64
bNumConfigurations 1
Device Status: 0x0001
Self Powered

Other than two minor flaws this hub does just fine. It would be nice if it could simply be system powered, as are others, without the need for A/C. Also the unit does need some "cool down" time before you put it away.

When used on a USB2.0 port on my Win2000 box it causes
a hard crash during driver installation. Works OK
in a USB1.1 port. Case does get quite warm during use.

It is compact for convinience and seems to do a good job so far. I can connect it to my laptop and disconnect it at any moment and all of my peripherial still work properly once reconnected.
The only thing is when I first got it, it made my computer crash a few times when my laptop went into hybernation over night after leaving it on and the screen up. I have started closing the screen at night and it isn't doing that any more.

This was a great idea for a 4 port hup but it was it badly Designed.
The cables were way to short. It seamed too hard to add more than two extra USB cables because the extra USB slots seemed too close to gether.
Thats my two cents...