ORICO Aluminum Powered USB Hub Review

Introduction With the ever-growing number of USB-powered peripherals/accessories, finding accessible ports seems to always be a battle. Some motherboards may sport 8+ USB ports, but having to have to pull out your system to get to them is always a pain. If you always find yourself looking for additional USB ports for your headphone, phone changer, or wireless dongles, the Orico’s USB Hub just might be what you are looking for. The Orico USB Hub features three different configurations with 7, 10, 13, or 16 ports. Each port can be turned on/off via a button, contains aluminum body construction, and is universally compatible with Windows/MAC/Linux. The Orico USB Hub can be found on Amazon starting at $69.99 for the 7 port and up to $99.99 for the 16 port. We would like to thank Orico for sending us the 10 port USB Hub to review. Features and Specifications A Closer Look After unboxing the Orico USB Hub, we were quite impressed with the build quality of the unit. The aluminum body makes the hub extremely durable. Looking at the top of our sample, we find 10 USB ports, with each having a button to activate/deactivate the port. You will also notice that the top itself is topped with clear acrylic, providing a pleasant aesthetic view of the PCB as well as a blue LED indicator light when a port is in use. Turning the USB hub to its sides, we can see Orico continued to show off its PCB by capping both ends with clear acrylic. We dig this look and it adds some visual flair to something that is known to look fairly lackluster. The top side is where you find a DC 12v jack to power the unit as well as a USB-A 3.0 port to connect it to your PC. The Orico USB has various placement options with a rubberized pad on either end to prevent slipping if you were to place it on your desk. If you want it to be more secure, you can also mount the unit to the wall with the included cutouts. These cutouts are made in such a way where the hub can be mounted either vertically or horizontally. Included with the Orico 10-port USB hub is a USB-A to USB-C 3.0 cable, power bar, and mounting screws. System Configuration & Testing To test the Orico USB hub we enlisted the help of our TeamGroup PD1000, which can reach speeds of 900+ MBs read/write. During this test we used the following test rig and plugged the USB hub into a USB 3.0 port: CPU: i9 9900K Motherboard: Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Pro RAM: 2 x 8GB Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB @ 3200MHz GPU: Gigabyte 2070 Super Gaming OC OS Drive: Crucial P1 1000GB OS: Window 10 Professional X64 I will be running the drive first connected to the USB port itself then plugging it into the Orico USB hub for comparison. We will be using 2 benchmarking applications ATTO and CrystalDiskMark, which should give us an idea of how the USB would perform while connecting to the hub as opposed to directly connecting your device to the USB port. ATTO Disk Benchmark “As the industry's leading provider of high-performance storage & network connectivity products, ATTO has created a widely-accepted Disk Benchmark freeware utility to help measure storage system performance. As one of the top tools utilized in the industry, Disk Benchmark identifies performance in hard drives, solid-state drives, RAID arrays as well as connections to storage. Top drive manufacturers, like Hitachi, build and test every drive using the ATTO Disk Benchmark". In ATTO benchmark with the PD1000 plug directly into the motherboards USB 3.0 port, we see it top out at 433 MB/s write, and 438 MB/s read. Connecting the PD1000 into the USB hub, we see an ever so slight reduction in both read/write speed with write topping out at 430 MB/s and read hitting 437 MB/s. This reduction is well within the margin of error and can be said to be identical. CrystalDiskMark 6.0 “CrystalDiskMark is designed to quickly test the performance of your hard drives. Currently, the program allows measuring sequential and random read/write speeds." In CrystalDiskMark, we see a similar result as in ATTO with the PD1000 hitting 442 MB/s writes and 440 MB/s reads well directly plugged in. Plugged into the Orico USB hub, we see the read/write performance drop about 15MB/s with the PD1000 getting 426 MB/s writes and 425 MB/s reads. Final Thoughts and Conclusion The moment I took the Orico USB Hub out of the box, I knew it was not like any of the other USB hubs I have used. The craftsmanship and build quality of the unit far surpasses my old hubs and it looked great on my desk. I cannot tell you how many times I have needed to swap out cables to charge my phone, connect my camera, plug in a USB drive, or used my wired headset due to the limited number of ports on my case. The Orico USB was the perfect solution for my problem and I can also see how it can be very useful in other situations like charging stations or other places where you would need to plug in any number of drives. From a performance perspective, the Orico USB hub did very well and the TeamGroup PD1000 was able to maintain a consistent 430MB/s read/write. These speeds were only about 5-15 MB/s slower than plugging in the PD1000 directly into the motherboard. With a reduction of only a few percent, it wouldn’t be noticeable during use. Overall, I was thoroughly impressed with the Orico USB hub from a build quality, aesthetics and performance perspective. It is the perfect solution for anyone looking for some additional USB ports for their rig. Great job Orico!

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