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Just wasted $80 on a fake USB hub that caught fire after 10 minutes
Plugged it into my laptop, smelled burning plastic, and pulled it out smoking before anything melted. Anyone else had a cheap accessory almost destroy their gear?
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dakotab9317d ago
Stop blaming the hub, start looking at your laptop's power delivery. USB hubs are just dumb pass-throughs, they can't start a fire on their own unless your power source is already a mess. Cheap stuff is cheap but it's usually harmless. Your laptop probably has a short or a voltage spike issue and the hub just showed it. I've run $5 hubs for years without a single problem, never even got warm. You got lucky it burnt up before it took out the port, now you know your gear has a problem.
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susanb3417d ago
@dakotab93 I once plugged a hub into a frayed cable and wondered why my desk smelled like burning plastic, so maybe I'm the real problem here. Cheap hubs are like that friend who tags along to a party and just stands there until the cops show up. Your laptop sounds like it needs a timeout with a multimeter before it decides to take the whole desk out.
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diana51217d ago
@susanb34 what kind of hub were you using? I had a similar problem a few years back with a no-name brand from Amazon. Switched to an Anker one with surge protection built in and it fixed everything. My laptop used to randomly disconnect devices and get hot around the USB ports. The new hub stopped all that. Sometimes the cheap ones just can't handle the power draw from multiple devices, especially if your laptop is older.
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