I’ve spent the past few days testing out the new Anker 5 in 1 USB C Hub with my MacBook Pro 13" and Razer Blade 15. For the past few years I have used the standard suggested hubs and after paying a high price for these, the unboxing and feel of the items are never what you pay for, here its different. The packaging was well thought out and makes the hub feel like a much more expensive product than it is.
There is no flex in the shell, the attached cable is what I would put alongside the top “external SSD included cables”, again reinforcing a professional workflow feel. Finally, all the ports felt satisfyingly strong, which as a photo and video professional working for paying clients, any SD card reader from our Sony A7R3 cameras or USB A-C adapter for our Cfast readers have to be trustworthy. We cannot risk cables unplugging accidentally and risking the corruption of a file or even worse, a card.
On shoots the hub caught a lot of attention, from photographers at a top end level (who have held off buying into the USB C ecosystem with the simple excuse of “I need those ports”, to the coffee interns who cant connect their TV to their new laptop at home, this hub seems to work for everyone. The transfer speeds are great and work well in the field and the microSC card port has the same clicky feel as GoPro ports, which many hubs still lack.
I would change a few things about the product. Although it worked amazing for the past few weeks, I would love there to be a removable USB C-C cable. Although the Hub comes with a great pouch with space for the cable end and the device, along with other USB cables or I usually whack a sharpie pen in it and use it for naming cards etc on a shoot, I still felt tentative loading kit above it in case I bent the cable too far. That being said I’ve never had an anker cable break on me, I doubt this would be the first.
Secondly, I would have liked there to be a small drawstring or elasticated band on the top of the bag, just to hold in the hub a bit tighter, a few times I would spot the hub-bag at the bottom of my dark bag and realise the hub had got 3/4 out whilst I was out walking.
Overall, I would 100% recommend this, so much so that it’s already been nabbed off me by other photographers and my dad in the last week more times than I can count, however, words can only mean so much, since first writing this review I did some more thinking and will be getting one of these hubs for every one of my team members that work for AllMarkOne. As a very small startup, something that works this well for a great price cannot be passed upon.
Rory
www.AllMark.One
