[509engr]

I had a similar experience with a USB-C hub I bought from a brand recommended by wirecutter (not the exact model as it was "replaced by a newer model". I plugged it into a brand new laptop and I got a warning about it drawing too much power, which persisted when I plugged several other devices. I returned the hub and have been getting spammed by these emails ever since. That has made me very wary of buying anything from Amazon now without a good recommendation from someone I personally know.

[bombela]

Recently I bought and returned to amazon around 5 different USB SD card reader.

Turns out they all used the exact same USB hub/combo card reader chip.

This chip burns enough power at idle to heat up almost 30°C above ambient.

After enough testing I found out that on many motherboards, you can turn on USB power saving per port. This effectively get the device to consume almost nothing at idle.

But this only works on those ports. Anything indirect; for example apple usb-c to USB + HDMI dongle; the device would be burning power and heating up.

Same behavior on all three major operating systems. What matters is the motherboard ability to control power to a single USB port as far as I can tell.

[cbhl]

Are you saying that the hub drew more power when more devices were plugged in (expected)? Or that the hub broke the USB-C port on your laptop, such that when you unplugged it, any device you plugged in directly thereafter also reported drawing too much power?

Hubs drawing too much power was an issue with USB-A hubs as well -- to mitigate this you want a hub that is independently powered (that is, has its own DC barrel plug and wall wart).

You can also find hubs that charge laptops (Thunderbolt 3/4, or USB-C PD, assuming you have a compatible laptop) although you want to be very careful about the choice of charger and cable since a short can brick just about anything that's not properly protected on the USB-C port (basically most non-Macs).

[jon_richards]

> without a good recommendation from someone I personally know.

I’ve always thought there’s a big opportunity here for principle component analysis or other dimension reduction. The reviews you see could be filtered down to people who have reviewed other things similarly to you, like how Netflix gives different ratings for the same show depending on what else you’ve watched.

It’s almost like establishing trust. If someone has rated that USB hub 5 stars, you probably don’t want their opinion on a restaurant either. It would also give a real incentive to leave honest reviews, which would help collect data from the massive group that currently just doesn’t care.

[radicality]

I’m not familiar with this, but how does a hub draw “too much power”? Wouldn’t it be limited by whatever the max output of the USB port is and not be able to draw more than that?

[colejohnson66]

My guess would be either (1) the device asks for more than can be provided or (2) the device just draws more than can be provided and the host detects the voltage sag.