CyberPower High-Speed 7-Port USB Hub by Cyber Power
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List Price: Our Price: $25.56 You Save: $24.39 (49%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: CE See more digital camera details and other models |
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Digital camera reviews of CyberPower High-Speed 7-Port USB Hub
Digital camera Review: A proven winner that's worth the slight premium in price.
Summary: 5 Stars
[After over 2 and one-half years of service from this hub, I'm raising my rating to 5 stars. Below is my review from January 2008 followed by my revaluation from Sept. 2010.]
I realized I needed a 7-port hub and checked out the D-Link, Kensington, Belkin--the usual suspects. Then I chanced upon this unlikely contender, looking more like a jukebox in Amazon's picture than a hub. I was intrigued by the off-beat design and noticed that the price was competitive (though a couple of the others are presently offering rebates, a free flylight, and other sweeteners). Now that I'm looking at the CyberPower USB port "in person," I can provide a few initial impressions:
1. It's a lot smaller than the picture might imply. Compactness is nice, but you also want a hub that will stay put and that allows sufficient space between adjacent plugs.
2. Although the hub is designed for either vertical or horizontal use, the added and welcome weight of the detachable base makes vertical use the more sensible option. Otherwise, you've got a lightweight (and fairly generic) loaded-up plug which could easily move around, dislodging the USB mini-plug (a necessary evil except for small cameras) at one end of every USB 2.0 cable.
3. It seems to handle my equipment off of the USB power supplied by the computer, but I still breathe easier using the included AC power adapter. (To the manufacturer's credit, it's one of the slimmer, lighter wall-warts that I've seen.)
4. The flash drive mount is practical (but not unique). Now I can finally use that old Sandisk thumb drive that formerly was taking up the space of two USB ports.
5. The individual port lights are on all the time and, unlike most hubs, are not indicative of the presence or absence of a USB device.
In conclusion, it's a reliable performer and a convenient as well as eye-catching device--providing you go for the vertical look. If I were to suggest one design improvement, it would be to "fatten up" the tower so that it would be wide enough to permit horizontal insertion of USB devices with the hub in vertical position. Doing so would assure unforced accommodation of all your USB plugs, even the most space-devouring ones. Biggest "gripe": the vertical design is not real stable. The hub is easily dislodged from the base and bounces around quite a bit. If I had to do it over, I'd look at the heavy, dome-shaped Kensington.
[Revaluation after almost 3 years: I tried the Kensington. It was no more stable but less reliable. So I returned to the CyberPower, but without the base or vertical position. I velcroed its back side to the wooden surface behind my desktop machine, with printer and two 500GB storage drives inputted to the rear, one USB cable from the front side to the USB of my iMac, and a flash drive connected to the top side of the hub. Absolutely no problems. This item continues to rise in both popularity and price because it's so good. Should it ever fail, I doubt there's any other hub available that could surpass it. Forget the "cuteness" factor; this thing is all business.]
Digital camera Review: A shinning light
Summary: 5 Stars
Worked right out of the box - Would recommend it to any of my friends. Only don't put it where you sleep - The Blue light is like a searchlight in the dark. You could actually use it as a night light in your room.Digital camera Review: Add up to eight devices; powered hub
Summary: 5 Stars
Great hub. it's a plug in, which is actually a plus because it came power larger items too. I have not had any dead usb ports.Digital camera Review: Affects bootup of my PC
Summary: 1 Stars
I cannot have this hub connected to my Dell PC when I reboot as my PC will not boot up at all when it is connected. While it could be a PC issue, I find it interesting that I don't experiencing the problem when the hub is not connected. I previously had the 4 port Cyberpower USB2 hub and loved it, but I did not have enough ports for all of my peripherals, however, I have come to regret this purchase. Again, it could be my PC or maybe I have a defective hub, but I sure wouldn't buy this hub again.Digital camera Review: Another satisfied customer
Summary: 5 Stars
With USB 3.0 on the horizon, I didn't want to spend a lot for a
USB 2.0 hub; but I still needed functionality to handle more than 4 ports, AND ... with two 2TB external disk drives, and other goodies, attached to my laptop, I needed a powered hub. What initially caught my eye was (as another reviewer commented) the "juke box" appearance. I was somewhat disappointed that the green port indicator lights were just green lights and didn't function as true indicators to let me know which port(s) were active at the moment. And, like another reviewer, I like having a port on the face of the hub. I use a lot of micro SD cards from my digital cameras, PDA, digital voice recorder, etc., and having a port on the front let's me plug in a micro USB reader and pop those micro cards in and out as I need them (I'm running Windows 7, so I don't need to ask Windows to "remove" them for me). Data transfers among the hub attached devices is 100%, no lapses, no losses.I'm very happy with this CyberPower hub. I think you will be too.