Best USB Hubs 2026: Powered, Portable and Type-C

Every PC owner needs at least one USB hub to add ports, put connections within easy reach, or supply more power for charging / operation than your computer delivers on its own. One glance at the USB hub listings on Amazon will tell you that the market is full of choices, from tiny portable hubs that you can stash in a small pocket of your bag to large, powered hubs you'll want to keep on your desk.

Though there are plenty of choices, not all of them rank as the best USB hubs, and not all will meet your needs. To help you choose, we've tested more than dozens of models with different capabilities and listed the very best USB hubs on this page. We've also got some tips for picking the right type of USB hub, which you'll find below our product picks.

To find the best USB hub for your needs, consider the following:

Best USB Hubs You Can Buy Today

Best Desktop USB Hub

Getting a desktop USB hub like the Sabrent HB-B7C3 will change your tech life, both because of the amount of ports it has and because you can turn each one on and off. Sabrent's powered hub has a whopping ten USB Type-A ports, seven of which can do data transfer with the remaining three serving as changing ports only, capable of delivering more wattage to juice your phone, headset or tablet.

Each USB port has its own dedicated power button and, unlike with some competitors we tested, Sabrent's port buttons depress quickly, and have solid mechanical switches that make a pleasant clicky noise and stay in the up or down position. There's also a cool-looking blue status light to let you know whether a port is on or off.

I have been using the Sabrent HB-BUP7, the nearly-identical 7-port sibling to the HB-B7C3, as my daily driver for more than a year, and having these buttons is a real game changer. Changing default audio devices in Windows is a royal pain, requiring one to go into the control panel to, for example, make sound come out of your headset instead of your speakers. But with the power switches, I just turn off my USB speaker and turn on the wireless headphone dongle, or vice versa.

Anyone who works with microcontrollers such as the Raspberry Pi Pico or any Arduino board knows that most of these devices don't have on / off switches or even reset buttons. So, if you change code and need to restart them or you just want to power them off, you often need to yank the plug in and out, a huge hassle that could damage your gear. But with the Sabrent HB-B7C3, you can just toggle power on whatever port your microcontroller is plugged into.

The build quality on Sabrent's 10-port USB hub is the best we've seen on any hub we've tested. The clean lines, compact shape and tasteful lights and buttons make this look like a truly premium product. Having seven different data ports means that you can have all of your peripherals plugged in – your mouse, keyboard, webcam, microphone, 2FA key, speakers and headphones – and still have a port or two to spare.

The hub is powered by a massive 60-watt power adapter that looks like a laptop brick (we wish it were smaller). Sabrent boasts that the 3 charging ports deliver 2.4 amps of power while the data ports max out at 0.9 amps. As we found out when we we plugged our power load tester into the ports, both the charging and data ports are capable of delivering as much as 3.8 or 4.9 amps but only if you drop the voltage down to 4.05 volts (on all USB chargers, the volts go down if you request too many amps).

At 4.8 volts, which is around the minimum voltage most USB devices will tolerate, we got 1.25 and 1.32 amps from the charging and data ports, respectively. When I plugged my Android phone in to charge, a real-world situation because a device will negotiate the best combination of volts and amps, the charging ports sent 4.78 volts at 1.35 amps while the data ports gave the same amount of volts, but just 0.35 amps. To make a long story short, you'll get 6.4 watts from the charging ports, which is decent but not the 15-watts that fast phone chargers provide. All three charging ports should be able to deliver this at once.

All of the HB-B7C3's data ports operate at 5 Gbps and, in our tests, there was no drop off in speed from transferring data from our external SSD through the hub (versus directly connected to the PC). The 2-foot detachable upstream cable is helpful but we need an extension cable to reach all the way to the back of our desktop PC.

At $44 at press time, the Sabrent HB-B7C3 doesn't come cheap, but it's definitely worth the price. If you don't need the charging ports, you can save a little cash and desk space with the 7-port, Sabrent HB-BUP7 ($38 at press time), which also has a smaller power adapter. You can also splurge for the Sabrent HB-BU10 ($60 at press time), which has 10 data ports and no charging ports.

Best Premium USB Hub for MacBooks and Ultrabooks

All MacBooks and many of the best Ultrabooks come with only USB-C ports, and just a couple of them. That’s why there are so many portable USB hubs that connect to a computer via a built-in USB-C cable and then provide a few Type-A ports, along with some extra goodies such as an HDMI out or a card reader. Plugable's 9-in-1 USB-C Hub fixes that, by adding 4K HDMI, 140W pass-through charging, Gigabit Ethernet, four USB-data ports, and both SD and microSD card readers.

The pass-though charging port means, so long as you provide your own USB-C charger, you can power your laptop and other devices though the hub with one cable – a handy feature when you're on the go and don't have a lot of desk space. Similarly, the Pluggable hub's narrow design with the ports all on one side helps save space while keeping things tidy. And its metal shell feels like it can hold up to life on the road, frequently being tossed in a bag as you rush to your gate.

On our testing, copying a 50 GB test folder, we saw 621 MBps write speeds and read speeds of 830 MBps. Just keep in mind that file transfers will be slower if you have multiple bandwidth-heavy devices connected to the hub, as the upstream port is 10 Gbps. If you're frequently moving large files across storage devices and speed is important, you'll want a dock with a Thunderbolt 4 or USB4 upstream port for more bandwidth.

While the Plugable 9-in-1 hub delivers most of the ports you're likely to need without stepping up to something larger and pricier (typically a proper dock), its single 10 Gbps USB-C data port may be limiting as more and more modern devices connect over the newer interface. I'd love to see another USB-C data port here, because the second Type-C port on this hub is strictly for power passthrough.

Best USB Hub for iPads

Sometimes you just need a few extra USB Type-A ports on your laptop or desktop and you don’t want something that takes up a lot of space in your bag or on your table. At just 0.39 inches thick and 3.68 inches long, Anker’s 4-port Ultra Slim is very discrete. The hub has a built-in, 2-foot cable that’s long enough for any portable use, though you may want to use the attached hook and loop cable tie to keep it from getting tangled.

The Anker 4-Port Ultra Slim, as its name suggests, has four USB 3.x Type-A outputs and a single built-in Type-A upstream cable. As with every other hub on this list, we tested the Ultra Slim and found that it did not have any effect on transfer rates, providing our external SSD the same read and write speeds it got when connected directly to our laptop.

Though it has a very reasonable price ($12.99 at press time), Anker’s hub seems to have very solid build quality compared to some competitors, with a hard matte black plastic shell that shows no obvious seams and an attractive blue power light, though the casing got a little scratched as we carried it around. The Anker hub’s premium design stands in stark contrast to another cheap hub we tested, the Atolla USB 3.0 Hub Splitter, which has a glossy plastic shell with a line down the middle where two pieces of plastic were clearly glued or snapped together (and I fear could come apart some day).

Best USB-C Hub, Best Affordable USB Hub for MacBooks

Sabrent's HB-U3CR looks like it was built for MacBooks, thanks to a gunmetal gray aluminum chassis and a stylish, slanted design that will prop it up at an insertion-friendly angle on any table. However, it's an equally strong choice for use with a PC laptop that has USB-C ports and needs a few USB Type-A connections.

The HB-U3CR's small size and built-in cable make it easy to throw into your laptop bag, but a magnetic sticker that comes with it allows you to set up a permanent spot on your desk where you can attach and detach it, without fear of it falling over when you tug on the wire. It has three USB Type-A 3.x (5 Gbps) ports and a card reader that supports both microSD and SD cards, a boon for folks who are either using a digital camera or working with Raspberry Pis (which use microSD cards as their boot drives).

On our tests, the Sabrent HUB-U3 did not introduce any lag into file transfers, which means it won't hurt your performance. However, like most USB hubs on the market, it is limited to 5 Gbps, so that’s the top speed even if you connect it to a thunderbolt port and 10 Gbps USB peripheral. The 2-foot, built-in USB cord is about standard for a portable hub, but could be too short if you plan to use it with a desktop PC that you keep on the floor or far from your peripherals.

Best 10 Gbps, Type-A USB Hub

If you're using an external storage device – perhaps an NVMe drive you've put in one of the best SSD enclosures – you’d benefit a great deal from using a hub that supports 10 Gbps connections – alternatively known as USB 3.1 Gen 2 or USB 3.2 Gen 2. Unfortunately, very few USB hubs actually support these higher speeds and even fewer still support the 10 Gbps speed when it comes from a Type-A, rather than a Type-C, port.

The Inatek HB2025AL gives you four USB Type-A 10 Gbps output ports and one upstream Type-A 10 Gbps connector that's on a built-in cable. Considering that few laptops have USB Type-A ports that support 10 Gbps and few desktops have 10 Gbps Type-A ports on the front panel, you're probably going to be plugging this into the back of your motherboard. The model we tested was actually the HB2025A, which has a 1.6-foot cable, but we're recommending you spend an extra dollar or two to get the HB2025AL which has a 3.3-foot cable instead. Even 3.3 feet could be short if you're working with a desktop that’s on the floor.

You can also get other versions of Inatek's USB hub, the HB2025 for example, that connect to your computer via USB-C, which is a more common interface for 10 Gbps connections, particularly on laptops. We really wish one of these hubs had a mix of USB-C and USB Type-A downstream ports, but they are all Type-A downstream.

No matter what version of Inatek's hub you choose, the 10 Gbps connection is very welcome if you're working with external drives. Our test laptop did not have a USB Type-A 10 Gbps port so we connected the hub to a port on the back of our desktop and got read-and-write transfer rates of 684.7 and 492 MBps on our DiskBench 25GB test. By way of comparison, we got rates of 358.1 and 274.8 MBps when connected to a standard 5 Gbps port on our laptop, so the 10 Gbps speed makes quite a bit of difference.

Best USB-C expansion hub

While many new devices have shifted to using USB-C over the older USB-A standard for connectivity, the USB-C port count hasn't exactly kept up, whether you're using a laptop with a couple of the oval connectors or a desktop, which at most likely has two around back, plus one on the front panel. The Mokin 5-IN-1 10 Gbps USB-C to USB-C Hub solves the USB-C scarcity issue by turning one of those ports into four – or technically five.

The slim metal-wrapped hub has four USB-C ports running down one side, all running at up to 10 GBps. One of the ports is labeled for monitors and supports 4K, 60 Hz via DisplayPort over USB-C. A fifth USB-C port lives on the end of the hub, supporting up to 100W of power delivery (if you bring your own charger). This lets you push up to 85W to your laptop, while the rest is used to juice devices plugged into the hub.

As with all multi-port 10 Gbps hubs, your bandwidth is going to be limited by the upstream capabilities. So don't expect to connect multiple fast storage devices and expect them all to run at full speed. But if you need more USB-C ports to connect peripheral dongles or other accessories, the Mokin hub is a great option to ease your USB-C port anxiety, without spending a lot of money. It's often on sale for less than $30.

Just know that you'll need to connect to a power source via the port on the end for higher-drain devices. This hub often disconnected when plugged into my desktop's front-panel USB-C port and running an external SSD. But when connected to the ports on the back of my PC or to a USB PD power source, I had no issues with the hub not performing as expected. I saw write speeds using a 50GB test folder of 689 MBps and read speeds of 612 MBps – this isn't the fastest 10 Gbps hub, but beyond benchmarks, it's speedy enough for mainstream tasks.

Best Cheap Power-Switching USB Hub

This is a budget-friendly alternative to Sabrent’s HB series of USB hubs as it has 7 USB 3.0 data ports you can turn on and off, along with one dedicated charging port, and costs a lot less ($21 at press time). However, Atolla definitely cut some corners to get it to this price.

The chassis looks kind of ugly with a cheap-looking shiny plastic that’s a fingerprint magnet. The power toggle buttons for each port are soft and require you to hold them down for a second or two to change their state, which is a step down from the clicky buttons on Sabrent’s hubs. Also, the USB cable is built-in, so you can’t replace it with a longer one.

Similar to the Sabrent HB-U3CR, the Atolla delivered 1.2 amps at 4.8 volts on our power test and it charged our phone at 4.78 volts and 1.35 watts. The Atolla hub also offered similar performance to other hubs; we detected no slowdowns when copying files with our test SSD.

How We Test USB Hubs

When it comes to USB hubs, most of the time, the specs don’t lie. If you see a hub that has USB 3.x (USB 3.0 or USB 3.2 Gen 1) ports, those ports should operate at the same exact speed as connecting a device directly to a USB 3 port on your computer. To find out if any of the hubs we tested created a data bottleneck, we hooked up a 10 Gbps external SSD to the hub, which we connected to a laptop. We then used DiskBench to copy a 25GB folder both to and from the disk and compared the numbers to those we got when connecting the disk directly to the laptop.

In all cases but one, there was no change in performance from using a hub. Using the 5 Gbps interface on most USB hubs and on our laptop, we got read transfer rates of 355 to 360 MBps and write transfer rates of 273 to 285 MBps. The exact numbers could vary from one run to the next so there is no point in listing the results from each hub — they are all within the margin of error of each other. Only one hub, the Sabrent HB-UMP3, showed a slowdown in its write speed, dropping down to 179.5 MBps, about a 35 percent reduction in speed.

We also did power testing on every powered USB hub. To see just how much electricity the ports could deliver, we connected a load tester to the hub and tried to dial up as many amps as we could. As we dial up amps on any device, the voltage drops, so a 5 volt USB port could drop down to 4 volts or less as we increase the load, but typical USB devices need close to 5 volts – 4.7 or 4.8 volts is usually enough – so we tested how many amps we could get at 4.8 volts and at the, likely unacceptable, rate of 4.05 volts.

We also connected an Android phone to the ports and recorded how many volts and amps it received. The phone charging test was probably the most realistic, as it showed what kind of volts and amps a real device would negotiate with the hub.

Other USB Hubs We Tested

Not every USB Hub is one of the best USB hubs you can buy. We tested a number of other models that are worth considering, but not necessarily at the head of the class.

• Sabrent HB-BUP7 (7 ports, powered)
  We love this hub and it’s my personal daily driver. This is the 7-port version of the 10-port Sabrent HB-U3CR we recommend and, for some folks, a better choice because it’s more compact. However, at press time, it was only $6 cheaper than the 10-port model with charging ports, so the HB-U3CR gets the nod for giving you three charging ports for only a little more cash.
• Sabrent HB-U3CR
  This is the 4-port version of Sabrent’s awesome line of power-switch enabled, powered USB hubs. It’s dirt cheap at just $16, but it’s the only USB hub we tested that actually bottlenecked performance, cutting about 35 percent off the write speed of our external SSD. We also don’t like the layout of the ports on this as well as on its larger siblings. However, if you’re not overly concerned with performance, this is a good buy.
• JoyReken FlyingVHUB
  This is a standard, bus-powered 4-port USB Type-A 3.0 hub with a built-in USB Type-A upstream cable. The main twist here is that the hub is pyramid shaped and has a little RGB light in the shape of a V in the middle. You can change the color pattern a little by hitting a button, and there's a USB-C port on the back that appears to do nothing (it gave power to a device, but didn't send data).
• Ugreen USB-C 4-port Hub
  At $14.99 (and on sale at press time), this a solid choice for MacBook owners or anyone who needs a cheap, portable hub that has a USB-C upstream connector and four down-stream Type-A ports. It even has a USB-C power pass-through you can use for charging your laptop.
• Atolla USB 3.0 Hub Splitter
  Available for less than $10 at press time, this portable USB hub is a good value with an interesting twist. The Atolla has a single, built-in Type-A cable to connect to your laptop, along with four Type-A USB 3.x ports for output. Each of its four downstream ports has an on / off switch, which is something we love on powered, desktop hubs but is less necessary on a portable hub where you're not leaving things plugged in for long periods. The 6-inch, built-in upstream cable is too short for a lot of people.

Discounts on the Best USB Hubs

Whether you're shopping for one of the best gaming laptops or another model that didn't quite make our list, you may find some savings by checking out our lists of Dell coupon codes, HP coupon codes, Lenovo coupon codes, Razer promo codes or Newegg promo codes.

Tom's Hardware USB Hub Coverage

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