Customer Reviews

IOGear USB 2.0 Hub and Card Reader GUH284R

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

I purchased two of these separately and neither of them lived up to IOGEAR's claims. I got about 5 Mbps from a Sandisk Extreme III CF card on two different Macs and a PC. This is only about 1% of the 480 Mbps memory card transfer rate advertised in IOGEAR's literature and on the back of the package, "Just insert your memory card and transfer data at 480 Mbps." Using the same memory card and computers, I achieved much much faster data transfer rates with a Sandisk reader (although still not 480 Mbps...this figure is unrealistic for flash memory).

Part of the problem is, the card reader establishes itself on the USB bus as a 12 Mbps device (USB 1.1 speeds), according to Apple System Profiler. I'm not sure why this occurs, because the GL819 card reader controller used in this device is designed to run at USB 2.0 rates. But this anomaly was apparent with both units I had, and the transfer rates I observed are consistent with this slower USB rate.

The hub itself registers as a USB 2.0 hub, and devices plugged into the USB ports do seem to run at their rated speed.

Another problem I had was the unit kept freezing up. I would disconnect it to take my Powerbook somewhere, and when I came back and plugged it in, none of the devices connected to the hub would work. I would have to disconnect the hub from the computer and remove its power cord temporarily in order to get it to come back.

Buyer beware.

John

I bought this device in order to avoid desktop clutter. I had the following devices on my desktop at home:
-Compact Flash adapter for my camera's memory cards
-SD adapter for my wife's camera
-Memory Stick adapter for my wife's mp3 player
-Two USB hubs, one 1.0 and one 2.0 (high speed)

This single device successfully replaced all of these devices. I currently have the following items connected to this device:
-A Dell all-in-one printer
-Two external USB2 hard drives which I use for media storage and backup
-A treo 650
-A webcam
-A Zen Vision media player

The data transfer speed when downloading from memory cards is excellent. In fact, the limiting factor in data transfer is probably the speed of my hard drive, not the reader. I disagree with a previous reviewer - the stand so far works fine.

I have also had no problems with accessing multiple devices at the same time. I have simultaneously printed, synched my treo and uploaded files to my Zen Vision.

My home system is a Dell running Windows XP, fully patched. I have NEVER had a technical difficulty with this product. The manual advises that you may have problems with other operating systems.

A friend of mine had great difficulty with any number of USB hubs when using Windows Me. Further, there are known issues with the original version of Windows XP and USB hubs. If you have problems with this or any other USB hub, please make sure that you have installed all of Microsoft's free service packs. To do this, open Internet Explorer and click on Tools --> Windows Update and follow the instructions. I only mention this because something like 70% of home users have no idea that free software updates are available from Microsoft to fix problems with their operating systems.

I purchased a second one of these adapters for my office. Again, I have not had a single technical difficulty. My office machine is an IBM T42 running XP, again fully patched.

As a side note, you really should not leave CF of SD cards in readers for an extended period of time. These devices look simple, but they are sensitive, high-tech, products. Leaving these cards in a reader for extended periods of time can lead to damage from micro power surges. In fact, the problem with corrupted files mentioned by a previous reviewer might in fact be the result of problems with the card caused by consistently leaving it in any reader.

If you try to copy a corrupted file from a memory card, then Windows will in fact abort the copy process. This is true not only of this device. If Windows is in the process of copying a corrupted file from your hard drive, it will abort the copy as well.

It looks nice although the vertical stand is useless. Sounds good to. 6 USB2 ports and a card reader.

Unfortunately it is badly flawed. It'll pause and restart during file transfer using the card reader, corrupting files in the process. Additionally, if you leave a card in the reader your computer will every so often redetect it and pop up a window. Can get very annoying as it interupts whatever you are doing or wkaes your computer if suspended. Lastly, it has the same pause and restart problem with the USB ports. If you are trying to print through this hub you are in for a tough time. This thing cost me a lot in paper and ink before I went back to my previous hub.

I've used other hubs and readers on this computer with no trouble. This one though is going back to IOgear.

This thing was buggy from the start and now it has stopped working completely. It powers on but nothing at all works. The CF port never worked particularly well anyway. So, annoying waste of money and now I need to find another hub.

Here's a quick summary:

Pro:
1) Auto-mounts lots of memory card formats as drives under XP.
2) Has 6 USB ports - 4 on back and 2 up front for easy access
3) Has AC adaptor so that it can power lots of devices simultaneously; sometimes your computer can's supply enough juice to power all the USB devices that you can plug into it.
4) Neat white color that makes you feel like an iPod hipster (hey, I own two iPods so I can mock myself!)

Cons:
1) Doesn't sit well vertically when lots of cables are plugged into the back. Wants to tip over backwards.
2) Costs more than buying individual USB hub and card readers.
3) And the biggest con for me is... it messes up my suspend mode on my Sony Vaio laptop. Don't know why, this probably won't happen to you, but it seems to lock up my laptop periodically after it auto-suspends (probably a laptop power management issue). Once I even had to remove the battery from the laptop to get it to reboot. So to fix the problem I have to keep the hub unplugged and plug it in only when I want to use it. This seriously limits it's usefulness.

Please understand that your mileage may vary; you may never experience this issue, and I would easily rate it 1 star higher if not for con #3 above. I'm sure that there is some obscure Windows setting / bios upgrade / dll that I could tweak to fix the issue, but I'm just not willing to spend that hours necessary to figure it out. Maybe it's time to consider a Mac again.... :)

Despite claims on the iogear site to support Vista, this hub and card reader periodically stopped working -- the card reader especially usually required a restart after every use. Repeated e-mails to support have gone unanswered.

I have this connected to my laptop, and it doesn't work with my all-in-one printer scanner. It appears to have throughput issues. The card reader works fine, hence the 2stars.

I've been using this with my Powerbook and have been having no problems. I have hooked this up to two external hard drives, an external CD-RW, an external DVD-RW and various other things. The card reader works great. I've put my memory sticks in there as well as other memory cards and it read them with no problems. I haven't tried the stand yet because it fits the space I have for it just right when it's laid down, but it doesn't look like it can hold the hub when things are plugged in. If you want a great hub and don't have a card reader, give this product a shot.

We now own 4 digital cameras and 1 video, and need to read memory, SD, SD-high, and compact cards. With our Mac this was the gadget we needed. Now we can download any card! They eliminated the need of USB ports for different card readers and gave us more 2.0 USB ports. So far everything we connected worked perfect. We love it.

I've used the IOGear lightly since 7/2006 on my Mac mini running Tiger without any problem relating to it. (My Apple USB Modem hangs up when I mount a flash drive or a card, but that's an issue with the soft modem, I think.) As long as it keeps doing what it has been, my only two inconsequential caveats are that its extreme light weight precludes vertical use in the cheap rubber "stand," and that Secure Digital cards go in label down when using the thing horizontally. That's counter-intuitive and, I'm pretty sure, the opposite of how you insert all the other kinds of memory cards.

Due to the mixed reviews I called the company up before my purchase. Someone picked up quickly and seemed sober - a much better than average performance for this sort of thing. Haven't had to call them more than that one time, though.