Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsHighly recommmended: compatible, fast and reliable data transfers, good charger ports; avoid USB wireless peripherals
Reviewed in the United States on January 15, 2017
Works great on the USB 3.0 ports on my mid-2012 MacBook Pro with 5 different external hard drives, an external SSD, and an iPhone 6 Plus.
Works successfully for fast multi-Gigabyte transfers on all of the following:
- 3 Western Digital My Passport Ultra USB 3.0 drives (2 & 4 TB) powered by the hub
- a Seagate GoFlex external 3.5" 2TB drive (separate power supply),
- iPhone 6 Plus (speed-limited by its USB 2 port),
- an old 1 TB WD MyBook AV 3.5" eSATA drive (with external power brick) connected via a Newertech eSATA-to-USB-3.0 adapter cable.
- a 960GB SanDisk ExtremePro SSD in a 3.5" NexStar CX USB 3.0 external drive enclosure
- an Apple/Toshiba 250 GB 5400 RPM 2.5" laptop drive in a Seagate USB 3.0 2.5" enclosure
Results:
Fast reliable large and small data transfers with all 7 hub data ports connected simultaneously, powering 3 external 2.5" drives. No data loss, no connectivity glitches so far in 3 weeks of heavy use and daily overnight backups of 50-300GB on each of 2-3 WD and Seagate USB 3.0 drives. Excellent throughput on disk-disk copying. Large external in-line power brick stays cool under moderate load.
Sample real-world transfer speeds: cloning changes on the Crucial MX200 SSD in my Macbook to external WD and Seagate USB 3.0 drives through this hub, using Carbon Copy Cloner app (highly recommended to clone drives for daily Mac backups!) on Mac OS El Capitan 10.11.6 with internal SATA-II interface:
- 136GB, 9850 files in 30 minutes (75 MBytes/sec) to Seagate GoFlex 3.5" 2TB USB 3.0 drive
- 123GB, 1580 files in 41 minutes (50 MBytes/sec) to 2.5" WD 2TB My Passport Ultra USB 3.0
- 42 GB, 11,000 files in 9 1/2 minutes (74 MBytes/sec) from Seagate Momentus XT 2.5" 1TB hybrid drive to Seagate 3.5" external USB 3.0 drive
I have a 200 GB Windows 10 Virtual Machine (VM) that I temporarily moved to an external drive, and it runs fine "live" through this hub (not recommended due to the chance of file system corruption if the drive is disconnected while the VM is running).
The charging ports on the Ankur hub seem strong; 1 port is delivering 1.02A into my BlackBerry Z10, which maxes out at 1.08A on the best conventional (pre-QuickCharge) USB charger I've ever seen (2A BlackBerry PlayBook charger).
Caveat: as expected, wireless peripherals should not be used with USB 3.0 hubs like this one due to radio interference from the USB 3.0 5GHz clock. Instead, am running my Logitech Unifiying Wireless Mouse USB adaptor and the wireless USB base for a MIcrosoft Wireless Keyboard 6000 v2.0 in a separate USB 2.0 hub off the other USB 3 port in my MacBook: a Sabrent Model HB-UMLS 4-port USB 2.0 hub. This has been 100% reliable for over a year, with no loss or delay of keystrokes or mouse gestures through the Sabrent hub, but the same wireless adapters were flakey as expected when I tested them in the Anker USB3 hub.
The usual Anker quality is apparent here, and I expect long life from it. "It just works".
