Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsQuestionable durability, middling design
Reviewed in the United States on May 19, 2014
I have had this product for about 7-8 months as of the time of this writing.
As for the pros, it was able to work perfectly and (as far as I can tell) flawlessly with my various USB devices. Permanently attached to the hub I have an Apple wired keyboard, an Apple USB-ethernet adapter, a USB/lightning cord for plugging in my iPhone, and a Seagate 2.5" portable drive. Everything worked at full speed. Everything could be plugged an unplugged at will and still work.
I would also sometimes plug in an extra portable HDD and/or 1 or 2 flash sticks at a time everything still worked fine.
So until recently, my only functional complaint is that the USB ports are spaced too closely together on both the front and back (they seem to have about the same spacing on the back where there are 5 USB ports and on the front where there are another 2). If your USB plug has anything but the absolute lowest profile of overmold, its going to block the adjacent port. This can turn this nominally-7-port USB hub into something that is functionally more of a 5 or 6 port (because 1 or 2 of your ports will be blocked by USB plugs that are anything but the smallest of USB plugs). That's still plenty of USB ports for me but if they're going to build 7 USB ports, why not space them out so that you can actually use all of them?
However, recently I had a much more severe problem. Just last week something about my AmazonBasics USB hub broke. My 2.5" portable HDD would no longer work with the hub and my other devices lost their hot swapping capability. For example, if I unplugged the Hub from my computer and power, left my iPhone, USB-ethernet adapter, and keyboard plugged in, when I then plugged the Hub back into power and my computer all those devices would work until I unplugged them for the first time... and then they could not be plugged back in and work.
Amazon sent me out a replacement under the 1 year AmazonBasics warranty and this new one is working perfectly as my original did when I first received it. However, with that failure in less than a year, and only a 1 year warranty, I'm suspicious about the quality of this device.
Buyer beware. Unit broke in less than 8 months. All it did was sit on my desk. Only 1 year warranty. I hope it was a fluke.
