Trendnet USB 3.0 to Gigabit Adapter + Hub

Product: Trendnet TU3-ETGH3 USB 3.0 to Gigabit Adapter + Hub
Provided By: Trendnet
Price: ~$40 at time of Publication

Introduction:

Today we are looking at a little device that has more purpose in this day and age than you might think. We are taking a look at a USB 3.0 Hub that has an integrated Gigabit Ethernet port. While that may not sound that exciting at first, I'm sure there are many people out there that have Ultrabooks and other Windows tablets that rely on wireless only. While that may be fine for some situations, I've found more and more times that I wish I could just plug a wire into a device and have it transfer large data chunks faster. 

Part of my job requires me to setup new PCs and tablets and I like to create an image of the machine when I'm done so if the client screws things up, I can quickly restore the backup. Often, pushing the image over a wireless network - even a fast one - can take a long time and it's really handy to be able to push this much faster over a wired network. Also, with the aforementioned Ultrabooks and other devices, there is often only a single USB 3.0 port and it would be nice to plug in multiple devices and card readers into the machine in order to maximize the 5Gbps bus offered by USB 3.0 but that single port can only go so far.

That's why the Trendnet TU3-ETGH3 is more handy than you might think. If offers a total of 3 USB 3.0 ports in addition to the Gigabit Ethernet port. Let's take a look at what you're getting in this package and then quickly cover how it performs.

First Look:

The Trendnet TU3-ETGH3 ships in one of those annoying clear clamshell packages that require you to cut it open with scissors, but once you hack your way into the beast, you will find the following items. 

In addition to a software CD that contains drivers for Windows and Mac, you have the small USB 3.0 Hub as well as a powered adapter in order to provide power-hungry USB 3.0 devices enough juice to operate properly. There is also a quick-install guide, but as this product is USB, you simply plug it in.

For the record, installation in a Windows 10 Build 9879 machine didn't require drives at all. It took a couple of minutes to download the drivers from the web and it was ready to go. For testing, I made sure I used the drives on the disk (which were the same as downloaded) so that the performance you'll see in a few minutes will be accurate as to what you should expect.

The device is large enough to provide ample space by each USB port in order to use fatter flash drives. This is awesome and I'd much rather have a USB hub that is a little bulkier than one that requires small USB devices only.

On the next page, we'll quickly come some of the features and specifications before we quickly touch on testing, performance and compatibility.