–Â Manufacturer: Xenta
– Model: EWS-BUHY3045
– Price: £14.99 (At time of review)
Xenta have been around for since 2003. They offer a variety of tech products ranging from speakers, computer accessories, camera accessories and other lifestyle products. So they are a maturing company. When they offered to send me their latest USB hub, I was delighted with what came out of the box.
The hub itself supports USB 3 at advertised speeds of 5gbps and has a sleek and stylish aluminium finish. It certainly doesn’t look cheap and tacky and could easy pass for a more expensive price tag. It looks like it’ll be quite hard to break because of the aluminium, unlike some cheaper plastic hubs. Which is good news for people like me and you. The triangular shape has been designed so you can rest your smartphone or tablet on it, useful for things like Facetime, or watching a movie. It can also be used as a digital photo dock which is a nice touch.
The hub is also backwards compatible with USB2 if you’re still sporting a board with the older ports or using older devices or technology. It also works on Windows, Mac and Linux. So shouldn’t be a problem regardless of the Operating System used. It also supports Plug and Play as well as having hot swapping abilities.
The hub comes with a USB 3 extension cable to plug it into your machine. It also comes with a 5V DC power adapter if you find your devices are not getting enough juice. To make it even better it comes with a 2-year warranty as standard so, its apparent that Xenta have faith in their products – which is nice to see in today’s age of disposable technology:
“Our mission is to bring new and stylish technology for the home and business. We’re proud of the quality and the value for money of our products.”
On one side, you have 3 USB ports and turning it around to the other side reveals the 4th port and the connector for the USB3 cable and 5V port.
Conclusion
One of the problems with some of the cheaper hubs is that they can sometimes perform slower than connecting to the motherboard directly. However, this wasn’t the case with this little gem. First of all I tested transferring a 4GB file to a Buffalo USB 3 Hard Drive. With the drive connected to the hub, it took 28.5 seconds. However when I connected the drive directly to the motherboard it was slightly slower, clocking in at 31 seconds. So performance isn’t going to be an issue here.
To be honest, this is a good sturdy piece of equipment and can quite easily be transported around if needed. The addition of the DC port is extremely helpful if you are going to be plugging multiple devices in. I noticed that it struggled to power my USB 3 hard drive for more than a few seconds at a time without being plugged into the mains, however I tested with a few pen drives and a mouse and it was absolutely fine being powered from just the PC alone. For anyone looking to purchase a hub, this one I would highly recommend to anybody, and I look forward to seeing more of the Xenta product range going forward.
Will you be purchasing it, or do you have one already? Let us know your thoughts and feedback.
