USB Hub Power Question

[Eric212]

Hello, I need a little education on how powered USB hubs work, I've searched around but can't seem to find an answer to my specific question.

I purchased THIS powered USB 3.0 Hub over a year ago, it looked like a nice solid unit with plenty of power to run the things I wanted to connect to my small laptop (external DVD burner, smartphone, mouse, keyboard). I am pretty happy with it, it does great with all of my peripherals, including charging my smartphone or whatever else I want to charge.... as long as the laptop is connected and powered on.

Here's my question: When my laptop is either turned off, or disconnected from the hub, the hub seems to only put out a trickle of power to whatever is plugged into it. For example if I plug my phone into it to charge and the laptop is powered on, it charges it normally, but if I disconnect the laptop or shut it down, the hub still charges the phone, but does so extremely slowly. (what would normally be charged in 2 hours might take an entire day to charge). When the laptop is off or disconnected, the power light on the hub remains lit, (as it should, it's plugged into the wall) but the output drops to almost nothing.

Why does this happen? It does the same thing even if there is only one thing plugged into it, or if everything is plugged into it.

Thanks!
Eric

 

[corroded]

Does not sound like the "powered" part is actually delivering much power. Look it up on the mfg's web site and contact their support. Since you have not provided a mfg / model number, we are just looking at it blindly.

700+ listed here:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=usb+hub+3.0+powered&N=-1&isNodeId=1

 

[Eric212]

Does not sound like the "powered" part is actually delivering much power. Look it up on the mfg's web site and contact their support. Since you have not provided a mfg / model number, we are just looking at it blindly.

700+ listed here:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=usb+hub+3.0+powered&N=-1&isNodeId=1

I provided a link in the original post to the manufacturers website with all of the specs for the hub, the text that says "THIS powered USB 3.0 Hub" is a link. Here it is again: http://www.siig.com/it-products/usb/bay-hubs/4-port-usb-3-0-hub.html

 

[corroded]

Sorry, missed the embedded link... my bad. Looks like the 4A is equally distributed across the ports. So, 4 ports w/ 4A across them is 1A per port.

The extra power applied by the powered laptop boosts the output. If the power was 8A or even 6A w/ a port labeled w/ the High Output 2A you'd be OK.

Had a similar issue getting an adapter for the car that has the right output to power the smartphone while actually using it in the car.

 

[Eric212]

Looks like the 4A is equally distributed across the ports. So, 4 ports w/ 4A across them is 1A per port.

yea, it definitely does not put 1A to any of the ports when the laptop is disconnected. My phone charges at normal speed with 1A, it only seems to put out a fraction of that. I hadn't really thought there would be something wrong with the hub because I had one previously that did the same exact thing. I thought my old hub was just a piece of crap though, that's why I bought this one. When this one did the same thing, I suspected that just how they worked, but coulnd't understand why. I suppose I should send an email to the mfg to ask.

thanks for the reply