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Teardown: A Generic 7-Port USB 3.0 Hub That Wasn't

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The recent end-of-financial-year sales were rather interesting – I found myself spending a lot more time browsing AliExpress than I did Amazon or eBay this year which is something I wouldn’t have envisioned in the past. I suppose the deals offered by the others just weren’t that good. While AliExpress was dangling cashbacks and coupons, I decided to make the most of it and buy some things that I needed.

I felt like a USB 3.0 hub with a nice number of ports would be a good thing to aim for. After all, who doesn’t need more USB 3.0 ports nowadays? But alas, while I thought the world of hubs have long advanced far enough to mean that even your average product would be decent – I didn’t expect to receive what I received …

Unbagging

As with generic, low-cost items, this one arrived in a bag rather than a box.

There isn’t much to identify who made the product, with the only name seemingly being a difficult-to-track-down Shenzhen Lishi (or is that Lishl) Technology Co. Ltd.

The hub has a captive USB-A cable, seven ports with individual indicators and switches. There are no other inclusions.

The body of the unit is entirely plastic, so definitely not like the mostly-metal of my Simplecom CHU810 which I had used in my optical drive tower-of-power. Visually similar products but definitely quite different in reality.

There is a small barrel jack for external power input, but there is no labelling regarding the input requirements. No power supply comes with this particular unit, but I suspect other (more expensive) listings may come with one. This one was listed at just shy of US$5.

It’s very anonymous, without even any branding or specifications on the rear.

The USB-A connector has a blue tongue and USB 3.0 contacts, but the plastic seems to have some mould flash.

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