10 Ports Powered USB 3.0 Hub – 5Gbps High-Speed Expander With 12V 5A 60W 2.4mA Power Adapter – Aluminum Alloy Multiple Port Splitter for Laptop, Phone, Tablet, PC

I use USB connections on my desktop PC to back up files on external drives or copy photos from SD cards. In both cases, many GB of data need to be transferred and so the transmission speed is important to reduce the transfer time which can be several hours in some instances. Clearly USB 3.0 (or later) is much faster than USB 2.0 by a theoretical factor of about 10x. I have never seen these speeds in practice but USB 3.0 always seems to be much faster. My problem with my PC is that 4 USB 2.0 ports are readily accessible from the front of the PC whereas the single USB port requires access to the back panel. Nearly all the USB 3.0 hubs I looked at had short cables which were designed for use with a laptop. There was also the problem of limited electrical current available from a laptop or a PC – especially if there are multiple devices plugged into the hub.This hub from I-Tikol seems to have everything I’m looking for. It has 10 full USB 3.0 ports that can be used for charging or data transfer. There’s a 60W external power supply with a long cable to a power outlet socket. The connection to the host PC is via a 1-meter USB 3.0 Type B. I hadn’t seen this type of cable before, but it seems to be a standard for USB 3.0 connections. A longer cable can be ordered from Amazon if needed. The design and finish of the product looked very professional – as it should for the high selling price. There’s an on/off switch at the back of the case next to the cable sockets. When powered on, a red LED indicator light is enabled and can be seen through the translucent top surface of the case. When a connection to the host computer is active, a green LED is illuminated. When a USB device is connected to one of the USB ports, a blue LED is illuminated below that port. The blue LED is only illuminated if there is an active device connected – just plugging in a cable or having the device turned off doesn’t turn the LED on. I find this feature very useful as I can now tell at a glance what’s connected and which USB devices are currently active. It doesn’t indicate whether the device is using USB 2.0 or USB 3.0.I tested the hub in copying some photo files from an internal SSD on my PC to an external USB 3.0 WD Passport HD. This drive was powered from the hub. Using a USB 2.0 connection took 43.0 minutes to copy 54.7GB of files. Using a USB 3.0 connection through the hub, took 14.3 minutes to perform the same copy – about 3 times faster. Note that copying files requires read access to one disk and read/write access to the other – all almost simultaneously. Thus the measured speed will not be a true indication of the potential data transfer rate through the hub but gives an idea of the more practical benefits.Next, I tried powering a small battery charger for L-ion and NiMH batteries. This charger requires a 2.0A USB supply to function properly and this hub had no problem providing the power for this to work. The product description on Amazon is a bit confusing as it seems to be saying that there are two “super charging ports” that can deliver 2.4mA. I think what was really meant was that up to 2 ports can deliver up to 2.4A (not mA) each and the total consumption could be up to 5A across all 10 ports.Finally, I do a lot of projects with Arduino and similar devices. Having multiple USB ports that can also provide 5V at an amp or two, is very convenient. I had no problems in powering and programming my circuits using this hub. I also like that this device has circuit protection features to prevent me from destroying my PC if my circuit is faulty.The product comes nicely packed in a decoratively sleeved cardboard box. Besides the hub, there’s a 1-meter USB 3.0 Type B cable to connect to a host PC and a leaflet with the same instructions printed on both sides.This is a top-quality product which is very well put together. I love the indicator LEDs. It works well although my tests never got anywhere near the claimed 5Gbps but it was because of the way I was testing it and what I was testing. This hub is expensive, but I think it would give a long reliable performance.