The VAVA USB-C Hub is a very neat solution and slotted into the side of the MacBook; it looks the part and blends in well with the design of the machine. In use, the fact that you can still plug the power into the first Thunderbolt socket is a great but also essential feature. This is a 100W pass-through to provide power enough for the i9 15-inch, which is power-hungry.
Unfortunately, the next socket is USB Type-C, which in itself is not a bad thing. The only issue is that it doesn’t supply enough oomph to mount a portable hard drive or USB reader. The only thing that I could successfully connect were some computer peripheries, such as a wired mouse with a USB Type-C adapter fitted. In reality, the USB Type-C port seemed to be pretty much useless.
Next in the line is the HDMI socket connected to a TV; this worked as well as you’d expect. I plugged this into a standard LG television and a Benq BL-27111U monitor; in both cases, it worked without a hitch, and there was no messing around with the laptop’s settings.
Next up are the two USB 3.1 sockets and again plugging in a series of devices; these seemed to work without issue.
When it came to transferring speed, the small hub worked well and attaching the OWC Envoy Pro FX kept a consistent transfer speed of 1600MB/s with no slow down compared with a direct connection.
Plugging through USB 3.1 and checking the speeds of a SanDisk Extreme 32GB card and again read speeds rated at 92MB/s and Write Speeds of 52MB/s, much the same as I’d expect from connecting directly.
