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 product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of CyberPower High-Speed 7-Port USB Hub
Customer Review: Works well with Windows Vista
Summary: 4 Stars
I purchased this cyber power seven port USB because it seemed to have the highest ratings on Amazon.com. I'd never seen it live, I simply took the word of the others that were reading these hubs. I see that some of the hubs had poor ratings, or inconsistency in use. I purchased two of these cyberpower hubs sight-unseen from Amazon about two weeks ago and have used them on two Vista-running PCs.
I like the tiny size of the hub and the cords (power and USB, each about 4 feet long) are included. The hub does have LED lights that are interesting, but they can be annoying as they stay on even after I power off my computer. This is because the hub is powered with its own supply. Additionally, the power supply has a transformer that is at the wall unit. It is of moderate size, but is not a simple plug. That is to say, you will need a very clear outlet with no other plugs around it to be able to plug in this device.
Although it is very convenient to charge products such as my iPod without having my computer on, one negative is that anything plugged into this hub remains on even when the computer is off. For instance, if I turn off my computer, which turns off the monitor, but I still have my keyboard plugged into the USB port, the keyboard is still active, the lights are still on, and this may lead to issues in the future with burnout. One solution is to have everything plugged into a power strip, and turn off the power strip. I've not needed to do this until I had this hub, now I must turn off the power switch each time.
All that said, I've owned this power hub for two weeks, I have about five devices plugged into it, and have had no issues with the use of the devices. They are instantly recognized, and well used and function perfectly. I've plug in a set of USB headphones to the cyberpower USB hub and there is no extra feedback or unnecessary noise in the headphones, which was an initial concern of mine given the powered nature of the hub. Not an issue.
In summary, a very good product, would be nice to have the option of turning lights on or off directly on the product, would be nice to have an on and off switch on the product itself, and it would be better horizontal rather than vertical. It does however function well.
Addendum: I have used two of these on 2 different computers for six months and had no one stitch of trouble. I have 6 devices on one, and four on the other--I essentially use them as docks for laptops. No issues.
Customer Review: A Real Stand Up Port
Summary: 5 Stars
Ok, the title has nothing to do with anything related to this review other than that the USB port does indeed stand up in a vertical position. Actually, that is not a bad thing although since it's not that heavy, if you don't "balance" the weight by plugging in an even number of USB cables on each side, it may fall over.
I grew tired of having Windows 7 (64 bit) comment to me that I could be realizing faster transfer times by using a faster USB port every time I plugged in my FlashCard reader to dump camera images. No little thing since my existing USB port was USB 1 and to transfer a 100 or more full sized RAW images could be a long process. Of course I needed to upgrade to something faster. Additionally, my previous port was a small 4 port model which with the ports being close together required me to remove the cord from port three in order to use port four to accomdate my FlashCard reader.
Naturally when I heard about the CyberPower 7-port USB-2 unit from my son who had recently bought one, I decided this was probably the best way to go. In addition to the side located ports, there is one on the front panel which makes it easy to plug in the card reader and nothing has to be unplugged in order to do so. Yes, now file transfer is much, MUCH faster and a few hundred meg of Canon RAW files will transfer in a much shorter time than before.
The unit is powered (comes with a small AC adapter) which is useful if you need to use the unit to charge extenal devices. I personally don't need that feature - although I did use it to charge up my Nook a few days ago - but my son has used that feature extensively so it's worthwhile to have that capability.
Bottom line? You can buy cheaper USB ports but knowing that more often than not you get what you pay for, I decided that it was worth the price to me. Set it on top of the tower case, plug in my devices and let it do its thing with no bother.
Customer Review: Powered USB even when computer is off! 500mA each port.
Summary: 5 Stars
I had a 4 port USB hub (also powered) from DLINK. However, that hub would always turn off when the computer was turned off. It wouldn't charge my devices when the computer was off. Also I had a growing list of USB charging/syncing devices.
The devices that are being used to sync/charge are:
Amazon Kindle 2 Charge/Sync
USB 2xAA Battery Charger
Bluetooth Headset(BlueAnt) Charger
Vado HD Charger/Sync
BlackBerry Tour Charger/Sync
iPod Shuffle Charger/Sync
All 6 items charge/sync completely. They also all charge even when the computer is off. Which was the most important thing I was looking for.
Some of the reviews on this site is conflicting because some people say it doesn't charge when the computer is off. That is not true. It does charge your devices even when the computer is off.
I haven't had a chance to test transfer speeds, but I can guess it will be like any other USB 2.0 hubs out there.
This hub is extremely small, even compared to my original 4 port USB hub.
I was surprised it used a mini USB port to USB to connect from the hub to the computer.
The 7 port hub manual also states that it has 500 mA for EACH PORT. Which is enough to charge most USB devices. All my devices charged at a normal rate. Although, my Blackberry Tour was being charged a bit slow compared to a dedicated power adapter (but this was expected...). This isn't a problem for me because I wanted something to charge my devices over night.
It cut down a lot of charging adapters for me. Also, I feel it's more green because I can have all 6 devices plugged in and if I'm not using it, I can just unplug the adapter for the USB hub cutting all the power to the devices.
The 7 port hub was tested with a MacBook Pro (Early 2008) running Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.
Hope this helps!
Customer Review: Great Powered USB Hub (Especially for creative/green power configurations)
Summary: 5 Stars
This USB hub is of VERY high quality.
I had some very specific needs that I needed this USB hub to meet. I run it on an older computer with only two USB ports (BIOS from 2003/04) that I needed to run two external hard drives on (one for backup and the other as a music server). I've configured the computer to hibernate during the day so I needed the USB hub to work well with my external hard drives coming out of hibernation (on older computers it's not always that straight forward to make this scenario work well). This USB hub had no issues at all, worked great.
I also connect the computer, USB hub, and two external hard drives to a "smart power strip" that cuts power to the external devices when the computer goes into hibernation to reduce power consumption, so I needed the USB hub to work in this configuration as well. Everything worked flawlessly, which was not the case with some other USB hubs I tried.
I did have one issue with this USB hub but I was able to resolve it. After shutting down my PC and powering it back on the boot process would halt after the BIOS loaded when this USB hub was attached. I needed to change setting in the BIOS to tell my computer not to boot from a "removable device" (i.e. floppy, usb, etc...) and that fixed the problem.
My boot order setting in the BIOS now reads:
1st Boot: CD-ROM/DVD Drive
2nd Boot: Hard Drive
3rd Boot: None
Simply changing the boot order did not work for me. Just an FYI in case this helps someone else.
Highly recommend this USB hub if you are trying to be a little creative on how you use power!
Customer Review: Who knew USB Hubs could be...pretty?
Summary: 5 Stars
I have to admit the first time you plug in this thing it really throws you off. This is quite possibly the..."blingiest" piece of computer hardware I've ever owned. The hub is housed in a nice clear plastic case with small green LED indicators to notate which connectors are currently in use.
Setup, as befitting a USB hub, was a breeze. The power and USB cables connected easily and the computer had no trouble interfacing with the hub. Given how badly my last hub performed with my current setup, I decided to do a few quick heavy data "burnthroughs" to make sure the same thing didn't happen with this hub as with my previous Belkin 7-Port USB hub (http://www.amazon.com/Belkin-Hi-Speed-USB-2-0-7-Port/dp/B000ESN9GA/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1275763953&sr=8-5).
My current setup is as follows:
1 Western Digital Elements 1.5 TB Hard Drive
1 Simpletech 300GB External HD
1 SimpleTech 1TB External Hard Drive
1 19-1 Card Reader
1 120GB iPod Classic
I have to admit, I was a bit leery, since my last hub I literally caused it to overheat and shut off copying files back and forth from my hard drives and my iPod. (I store most of my media files on my externals). Who knew you would ever have to..."reboot" a USB hub? Nevertheless, it did great! I copied several movies back and forth and transferred my 30GB Mp3 Library from one drive to another to see how it handled it. No complaints there either.
Ultimately, the hub is performing admirably. I have no complaints and it looks great to boot. :)