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Raspberry Pi Launch Official USB 3.0 Hub for $12

Raspberry Pi has unveiled another low-price own-brand product, this time a 4-port USB 3.0 hub compatible with most of its single-board computers.

In the past few months we’ve seen the company expand its range of official accessories and add-ons to encompass everything from AI HATs to SD cards and SSDs guaranteed to contain the right tech to ensure Pi owners get the best possible performance.

Most popular Pi models include a number of on-board USB ports, some folks need or want more, which is why the company is launching an official Raspberry Pi USB 3 Hub.

Cheekily, it pitches this as a “high-quality four-way USB 3.0 hub for use with your Raspberry Pi or other, lesser, computer.”

Thing is, has anyone been crying out for an official USB hub? After all, a quick search of sits like Amazon and eBay, or a rummage through the aisles of your local Poundland or Dollar Store will turn up reams of cheap n’ cheerful USB hubs.

So why make one?

Reliability, mainly.

Raspberry Pi says it became “frustrated with the quality and price of the hubs available online”, finding that available hubs were well designed and reliable if costly, or ugly with reliability and compatibility quirks yet cheap – often a mix of both.

By making they’re own, they help remove the guesswork and gamble involved.

So, how good is their hub?

We worked with our partners at Infineon to source a great piece of hub silicon, CYUSB3304, set […] to work on the electronics [and] the industrial design, and applied our manufacturing and distribution capabilities to make it available at the lowest possible priceRaspberry Pi’s Eben Upton

The resulting hub “works perfectly” with all Raspberry Pi models (with a USB A port) and described as being “the best USB 3.0 hub on the market today”.

The Raspberry Pi USB Hub features:

• Upstream USB 3.0 Type-A connector (on 8 cm integrated cable)
• 4x downstream USB 3.0 Type-A ports
• Data transfer speeds up to 5 Gbps
• USB-C socket for optional external 3A power supply

Connecting an external power supply to the hub can help ensure that all devices you connect to are sufficiently powered, as a hub powered only by the USB connection from the Pi may, if lots of things are connected, be unable to sufficiently power them all fully.

For passive things like a USB/external drive that wouldn’t be necessary, but if you then also connect a phone or tablet (which will start recharging its internal battery) a powered USB hub can negate that performance limitations that occur.

Buy the Raspberry Pi USB Hub

You don’t need to own a Raspberry Pi to use this as it’s a generic PC product; if you just want a reliable USB 3 Hub with no unexpected gotchas, and the ability to use it both a passive and powered USB hub when needed, it could be worth considering.

The official Raspberry Pi USB 3 Hub is available to buy at approved Raspberry Pi stores from today, where it costs $12/£10.

And no doubt it’ll be available to buy from other places at a higher price once they’ve placed their orders at approved sellers and the deliveries have arrived ;)