Customer Reviews

Targus PAUH210U USB 2.0 4-Port Hub

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Don't let its compact size fool you, this is a great little usb hub. I bought this as a gift for my non-techie mother which meant that I had to test it and get familiar with it before I wrapped it.

I have two larger, more expensive hubs at home and was very impressed by how well this little hub stacked up. The connection ports provided a nice snug fit for the usb cable and in spite of the small size and plastic casing I didn't feel like I had to carefully hold the case together when inserting and removing the cables. (The case on one of my larger hubs comes apart at the seams when I plug in a cable.) My old hubs are both 2.0 but seem to have issues with lag time. That's not a problem with the Targus PAUH210U. I tested all of the ports and found excellent response for mouse, keyboard and file access to an external hard drive.

The bottom line is that this is a great little hub for the price. I feel confident that my mother will find it both convenient and useful and with it's compact size and $5 price tag I can easily justify purchasing another of these hubs to throw in my briefcase.

I bought this as a hub for a PS3. So far it works just fine when all ports are used. Mine didn't come with an AC adapter, just the USB cable. In the instructions, it says the cable supplies the power to box. Two connections at 500mA each means this box gets 1 amp total power. I'm sure it works fine with any other computer, it's just that I only bought it for the PS3.

This is definitely a good buy if you need to expand your USB ports. It's small, cheap, and allows for external power (although, mine did not come with the AC adapter required for that). Even without external power, it does well. I can charge my HTC Touch, Philips VOX 150, and Philips GoGear 4GB on it without external power. It also included a cable that allowed it to be connected to two computers. Not sure why you would need this, though.

I had high hopes for this little device. It was exactly what I needed. It is inexpensive and made/distributed by Targus, a company that specializes in travel devices.

Unfortunately, both the original shipped to me as well as the replacement were absolutely dysfunctional.

Let me review in detail why this could have been so useful for me (and many others as well, I'm sure). My older laptop has 2 USB ports. I am an IT Consultant and travel every week, staying in hotels or motels at night. For my job I carry 4 USB flash drives and 2 USB external hard drives. I also have a cell phone which needs charging and a SanDisk music player which needs charging. Both of the last two devices can be charged from the USB port on a laptop, if necessary.

When I get into my hotel room at night, I often need to connect the external hard drives to synchronize them, as well possibly updating the content on some of my flash drives. The two USB ports on my laptop simply aren't enough. Even if I had a newer laptop with 3 ports (typical), I would still be juggling devices.

And you know how hotels can be: there are never enough available electrical outlets. Most of the time, I disconnect the clock (I bring my own, more reliable one) and plug my laptop into the freed up outlet.

So along comes the Targus PAUH210U USB 2.0 4-Port Hub. One can plug in the black connector only and have three additional USB ports. But even more convenient, the red connector can be used to boost the power of the hub from 500mA to more than 2A, which is necessary if I want to charge up my phone and music player as well as access my two hard drives.

In theory.

My actual experience is this: of the 7 devices I plugged into the Targus hub only one was recognized. They are:

Seagate FreeAgent 320GB external hard drive

Western Digital 1TB My Passport external hard drive

Patriot XT 8GB Flash Drive

Kensington G2 8 GB Flash Drive

Lexar 4 GB Flash Drive

Color Turn 4GB Flash Drive

SanDisk Sansa Clip music player

ONLY ONE of these devices was recognized by Windows XP and accessible. The Kingston drive. Keep in mind that I use these devices daily in multiple machines and never have any problems with them. It's true that the Western Digital drive needs to have a driver installed to function properly (unlike the Seagate, which does not); however, the driver is already installed on my personal computers.

I tried every possible combination of ports and devices on both my home computer and two laptops. No luck.

Even worse, I found that the first Targus hub did sporadically detect the Western Digital drive if I wiggled the connector and withdrew it partly from the hub. In all the years that I have used various USB devices I have never needed to do that.

So in conclusion, either I was very unlucky and received two lemons one right after another; or Targus is selling something that simply doesn't work.

I would strongly encourage you not to buy this product; and view other Targus products with a very skeptical eye.

I will email Targus customer support and update this review if necessary.

BTW, the retailer Osprey-Talon was very helpful and sent me a replacement without asking for an exchange. Needless to say, they are losing money on this and it certainly isn't their fault.

So far its being a great buy, not only it is cheap but by using only the black connection i am able to connect various simpler devices with the device. Really recommend to buy.

Product is exact replacement for inside a CD/DVD burner. Tech support wanted $800.00 to repair, but this fixed it for just a few well spent dollars. Thanks