By: Ben Joubert
May 10, 2019
I just recently went on a road trip to Vancouver. If any of you ever has the time to drive from Calgary to Vancouver, I highly recommend it. The winding road through the mountains is absolutely beautiful and there is great scenery all along the way. One of my friends in the car had never been on this road before, so he was taking as many pictures as possible to remember the amazing views. Using his phone so often meant it died rather quickly. We were also playing music via a different phone. Unfortunately, the car could only charge one USB device at a time. When we finally arrived in Vancouver, the issue compounded further. There were not many outlets in the place where we were staying, so we needed to swap off who could charge their devices at a given time. This included a multitude of devices like phones, Kindles, tablets, and Nintendo Switches all needing to be juiced. It would have been useful to have something we could use to refuel everything at the same time from one wall outlet. Enter the SilverStone UC03-PRO. If we had even more devices, the SilverStone UC04-PRO would have worked even better. While one may be geared more at travel than the other, the two products look quite similar and serve a similar purpose. Read on to find out whether we should have picked one up for our road trip!
The SilverStone UC03-PRO and the UC04-PRO arrived in a medium sized brown corrugated box. It was shipped via FedEx Ground from Chino, California, and arrived safely here in Calgary, Alberta. FedEx did a good job in ensuring the safety of the product. There were a few dents found around the packaging, but nothing to lose sleep over. The biggest dent is pictured above, but also it was not very deep and it did not break the cardboard. Also, after opening up the shipping box, there was enough inside to ensure the retail packages did not suffer any damage either. Let us go ahead and look inside.
The retail box for the SilverStone UC03-PRO and the UC04-PRO are about the same. Black, white, and blue are the name of the game for the colors. The light blue acts as an accent on some of the features, highlighting them nicely. All the important information is located on the front here, like the wattage, amount of ports, and the data transfer interface speed. The rest of the retail box has similar colors, but the back details more on the specifications, like the dimensions, weight, and everything else included inside. The two different models actually do feature a few different components because they are aimed at different use cases.
The UC03-PRO is aimed at portability and being a travel accessory. To this end, SilverStone included four different ends to the wall plug. They are easy to interchange, making this USB hub an excellent travel accessory. Otherwise, a USB cable with a micro USB connector on end and a full-sized Type-A on the other is included to plug into the hub and into a computer. On the other hand, the UC04-PRO only has a wall plug and USB cable, but no interchangeable sockets. The UC04-PRO has a much bigger power adapter and features a standard power receptacle, like one you would plug into an ATX power supply. The larger 10 port hub requires more power to be delivered to it, so it makes sense.
Before we move on, here are the specifications from the manufacturer's website:
Specifications
SilverStone UC03-PRO
Model No.: SST-UC03B-PRO
Color: Black
Material: Plastic
LED indicator: Power LED: Blue
Front I/O Ports: USB Type-B connector x 1 (Input)
USB Type-A connector x 7 (Output)
USB Ports: USB 3.1 Type-A connector x 7, max 2.4 amp per port
Data transfer rate: USB 3.1 gen 1 up to 5 Gbps (Compatible with USB 3.0 / USB 2.0 / 1.1)
Security Protection: Over current protection (OCP); Short circuit protection (SCP)
Environment: Operating Temperature: 0°C ~ 75°C
Operating Humidity: 10%RH ~ 90%RH
Storage Temperature: -10°C ~ 80°C
Storage Humidity: 5%RH ~ 95%RH
Controller: Genesys Logic GL3523 x 2
Operating system support: Microsoft Windows 7 (32bit/64bit), 8/8.1/10 (32bit/64bit) or future release versions; Mac OS 10.5 or above; Linux Kernel 2.6.31 or above
Net weight: 150g
Dimension: 200mm (W) x 23mm (H) x 53mm (D); 7.87" (W) x 0.91" (H) x 2.09" (D)
SilverStone UC04-PRO
Model No.: SST-UC04B-PRO
Color: Black
Material: Plastic
LED indicator Power LED: Blue
Front I/O Ports: USB Type-B connector x 1 (Input)
USB Type-A connector x 10 (Output)
USB Ports: USB 3.1 Type-A connector x 10, max 2.4 amp per port
Data transfer rate: USB 3.1 gen 1 up to 5 Gbps (Compatible with USB 3.0 / USB 2.0 / 1.1)
Security Protection: Over current protection (OCP); Short circuit protection (SCP)
Environment: Operating Temperature: 0°C ~ 75°C
Operating Humidity: 10%RH ~ 90%RH
Storage Temperature: -10°C ~ 80°C
Storage Humidity: 5%RH ~ 95%RH
Controller: Genesys Logic GL3523 x 3
Operating system support: Microsoft Windows 7 (32bit/64bit), 8/8.1/10 (32bit/64bit) or future release versions; Mac OS 10.5 or above; Linux Kernel 2.6.31 or above
Net weight: 214g
Dimension: 270mm (W) x 28mm (H) x 53mm (D); 10.63" (W) x 1.1" (H) x 2.09" (D)
The design of these USB hubs is straightforward. They are both mostly made out of plastic, but there is minimal flex to the rectangular hub. A small white SilverStone logo is located in the bottom right of the hub. The design is simple and straightforward. All the corners are rounded and overall, it is a fairly sleek device. When it comes to dimensions, the UC03-PRO is 200mm in width, 23mm in height, and 53 mm in depth. On the other hand, the UC04-PRO is 270mm in width, 28mm in height, and 53mm in depth. The UC03-PRO is much better suited for traveling due to its lightweight design, coming in at 150g. The UC04-PRO is equipped to sit on a desk and connect many devices and it weighs in at 214g. On the bottom of the both of the charging bases, there are two large soft rubber feet to keep it from moving around and two screws keeping the two pieces of plastic together. There are also two screws underneath the rubber feet that would need to be removed if you want access to them.
Above, you can see the wedges standing up. The hinge on both the UC03-PRO and UC04-PRO work smoothly and is able to hold phones in place easily. USB 3.1 Gen 1 connectors are located right below each wedge, making it easy to plug phones into it with short USB cables. The blue color of the USB connector is pretty common for the USB 3.1 Gen 1 standard, and is also a nice color change to the mostly black exterior.
On the one end of the connector, we have the blue LED indicator, Type-B USB 3.1 connector, and the 12V DC input. The blue LED indicates that power is on. The data transfer rate is up to 5Gbps, which is good for this many USB connectors. It would have been nice to see second-generation USB 3.1 with speeds of up to 10Gbps, but this is what we have. SilverStone promises full speed data transfer at all ports thanks to the Genesys Logic GL3523 high speed internal hub, where the UC03-PRO has two and the UC04-PRO has three inside. It also has 5V, 2.4A fast charging, which is good. The SilverStone UC03-PRO and UC04-PRO were able to charge my phone fast enough. To ensure the safety of the products, there is short circuit and over current protection on both the UC03-PRO and the UC04-PRO.
I thought I would throw in a larger iPad to see what the wedges were able to hold. The iPad was slightly wobbly in the wedges in the middle. However, once I placed the iPad near the ends, it was much more stable. The SilverStone UC03-PRO easily holds phones in each of the slots. I did not find anything to complain about with the slots and overall it was easy to use them. When it came to charging, I performed a few short tests with my phone. I measured the charging speeds using an app called AccuBattery and I ran two tests. I first used the SilverStone UC03-PRO to charge my phone from 73% to 80%, then I used a generic wall plug to charge my phone from 73% to 80%. It took the SilverStone UC03-PRO 9 minutes and 42 seconds to charge the 7%, and according to AccuBattery this worked out to an average of 1357 mA. The wall plug charged the same 7% in 12 minutes and 23 seconds, and according to AccuBattery this came out to 1188 mA average. The wall plug did have different specifications, which was 5V/1A, so the results were not surprising. The SilverStone UC03-PRO performed better than the wall plug in this case, which is promising.
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The SilverStone UC03-PRO would have been a beneficial addition to the road trip, since many devices would be able to charge relatively quickly. But charging is not the only thing these USB hubs can do. The SilverStone UC03-PRO and the UC04-PRO are two well-built hubs. The hard plastic makes it feel sturdy, while the rubber feet below are effective at keeping the hub in place. The plastic keeps the products lightweight, which is particularly beneficial for the UC03-PRO. As well, the UC03-PRO has great accessories, specifically the different wall plug-ins for traveling. On the other hand, the UC04-PRO had a bigger AC adapter which is necessary to power so many ports. The data transfer of the ports is fast, especially considering it can do data transfer through all the ports at the same time, but it would have been nice to see the faster 10Gbps standard here. Charging was also quite good. The products outperformed a normal wall plug, which is impressive. Overall, the UC03-PRO and UC04-PRO are useful devices to charge multiple devices or do a lot of data transfer at once. The UC03-PRO has an MSRP of $45 USD, while the UC04-PRO's MSRP is $55 USD. These are not the cheapest, but the amount of ports and the speed of the data transfer does make up for it. The SilverStone UC03-PRO and the UC04-PRO are great USB hubs for both charging and data transfer.
SilverStone provided this product to APH Networks for the purpose of evaluation.
SilverStone UC03-PRO
APH Review Focus Summary:
8/10 means Definitely a very good product with drawbacks that are not likely going to matter to the end user.
7/10 means Great product with many advantages and certain insignificant drawbacks; but should be considered before purchasing.
-- Final APH Numeric Rating is 7.5/10
Please note that the APH Numeric Rating system is based off our proprietary guidelines in the Review Focus, and should not be compared to other sites.
SilverStone UC04-PRO
APH Review Focus Summary:
8/10 means Definitely a very good product with drawbacks that are not likely going to matter to the end user.
7/10 means Great product with many advantages and certain insignificant drawbacks; but should be considered before purchasing.
-- Final APH Numeric Rating is 7.5/10
Please note that the APH Numeric Rating system is based off our proprietary guidelines in the Review Focus, and should not be compared to other sites.
The SilverStone UC03-PRO and UC04-PRO are well-built USB hubs with sufficient data transfer and charging speed for all your electronic devices.
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