USB-C Hub for the M1 Mac Mini. AGPTek, Elecife, Hagibis

[Music] hey guys welcome to elevated systems i'm your host cj and some of you know i recently purchased the new m1 mac mini and i've been putting it to the test seeing how it can handle my day-to-day workload and although having an entire desktop computer this powerful in this ultra compact form factor is pretty neat coming from the pc world as i really began to work with it i found that the lack of expandability and limited i o somewhat detrimental to my workflow not to mention the peripherals i needed started to clutter up my desk so i got on amazon and i started looking for a solution that would minimize some of the extra stuff i had connected to this little machine and i came across this the agp tech usb hub so let's get this out of the box see what it comes with and i can show you the stuff i was able to eliminate thanks to this so first is the hub itself which i'll get to in a minute but first i want to talk about this cable this agp tech hub is marketed as a usbc hub and thanks to clever and sometimes misleading marketing many people believe that makes it faster in fact before i bought this hub i looked for reviews on youtube about it and i couldn't find any on this specific one but i found some on very similar hubs and one reviewer even said to look for usbc accessories because they're faster which isn't necessarily true usbc just refers to the shape of the connector this cable is the perfect example this is a usbc connector now it's a usba same cable same transfer speeds in this case this is a usb 3.0 or now known as usb 3.1 gen1 usb hub meaning it has max transfer speeds of 5 gigabits per second it gets confusing because usb 3.1 gen 1 and gen 2 can have usb a or usb usbc connectors but when you get to usb 3.2 where we hit 20 gigabit per second transfer speeds there's typically only type c connectors as well as with usb4 which is what the mac mini has so on the one hand we're limited to five gigabits per second on this hub but knowing that and thanks to this cable if you don't want to occupy one of the high speed thunderbolt 3 usb 4 ports on the mac mini you can just connect it to the one of the usb 3.1 gen1 ports without taking a performance loss as you only get five gigabit per second speeds even if you're plugged into the 40 gigabit per second thunderbolt 4 so there you go that was my quick lesson on usb protocols let's look at this hub and why i picked this one as opposed to the more popular satechi hub first feature i was looking for was usb ports which i can access from the front of the computer and this has two usb 2 ports which may seem obsolete but if you use a wired keyboard or mouse or even a wireless one with an rf dongle these still use usb2 there are also two usb 3.1 gen1 ports as well as two sd card readers a standard and a mini which can be used simultaneously this is lacking a usbc interface like the satachi but again the satachi is also a usb 3 hub so its usbc port is limited to the same five gigabit per second transfer speeds as the usb a port anyway the final feature of this hub is why i went with it and that's because it's not just a usb hub it's also a 2.5 inch ssd enclosure and i happen to have a 500 gigabyte ssd that i can just slide in here now you can install a 2.5 inch mechanical hard drive in here if you wanted to if you do there are a couple of foam pads included that you should stick to the bottom of the enclosure to help absorb the drive vibrations no real need for these with an ssd just slide this in and screw the cover on with the attached screws and screwdrivers now thanks to this i'm able to get rid of my usb hub my sd card readers and my external ssd and replace them all with a single clean accessory that doesn't really take up any extra space on my desk some of the other features of the agb tab hub first the color and finish is identical to the mac there's also anti-skid rubber pads on the bottom so you can either put it under the mac or if you want a smaller gap between the two you can put it on top without damaging the finish or scratching the map all the dimensions are exact so it lines up perfectly as far as performance again it's limited to usb 3 speeds but keep in mind usb 3 transfer speeds is still theoretically up to 625 megabytes per second which is theoretically faster than the 600 megabytes per second say the three speeds in fact the ssd i have installed is rated at 550 megabytes per second read and 500 megabytes per second right of course those numbers are max sequential benchmark numbers i ran some tests under more realistic conditions first i checked the speeds of the sd readers for this test i used a sandisk extreme pro uh s1 sd card rated at 170 megabytes per second read speed which again is max sequential speeds typically the transfer speeds when ingesting mp4 and jpeg or raw files for my camera is between 85 and 105 megabytes per second for this test i had 36.44 gigabytes of data consisting of mp4 and jpeg files and i transferred it first using my usb 3 sd card reader directly plugged into one of the mac's usb ports and the files transferred in six minutes 35 seconds with an average transfer speed of 92.3 megabytes per second next i plugged it into the agp tech hub and i transferred the same files first to the mac internal drive and then again to the ssd i just installed in the hub both operations finished in the exact same 6 minutes and 32 seconds finally i added a mini sd card to the mini sd card reader in the hub this card contained about 30 gigabytes of the same type of data i transferred both cards simultaneously to the external drive which took 11 minutes and 55 seconds which is exactly the same amount of time it took to transfer each card one at a time so it wasn't faster to transfer simultaneously but it wasn't slower either which is the case with basically all the multi-slot sd card readers i currently own so sd card readers work the same or better than the ones that i use on my workstation pc now let's see how the external drive i installed in here performs first i connected the ssd to a sata connection in my workstation pc and i ran crystal disk mark benchmark and got read and write speeds of 549 megabytes per second and 436 megabytes per second respectively now in the hub the same benchmark on the mac resulted in a read speed of 288 megabytes per second and a write speed of 341 megabytes per second so not as fast as a direct sata connection but that's to be expected as the hub has to convert the sata connection of the ssd to usb but again this is a benchmark so let's see how it performs with some real world use again i transferred the same 36.44 gigabytes of data first from the external ssd to the max internal ssd which took two minutes and 24 seconds with an average speed of 253 megabytes per second then i transferred it from the internal drive back to the external drive and that operation took three minutes and 39 seconds at 166 megabytes per second finally for the real real world test i rendered an 11 minute davinci resolve project reading all the media from and writing the output to the external drive which completed in 16 minutes and 24 seconds then i rendered the exact same project this time reading the media from and writing the output to the max internal drive and that took 16 minutes and 11 seconds so only 13 seconds faster i can live with that especially considering the extra capacity of the external drive i output the project as h.264 had i gone with something like prores 422 hq i probably would have run out of room on the internal drive okay i guess it's time to conclude this one with my thoughts on the agp tech usb hub for the m1 mac mini overall the features aesthetics and performance were great all high marks there the only con i have is the price at 73 dollars u.s i think it's a little overpriced considering it only replaced 50 worth of accessories add a convenience tax and i'd say this would be more appropriately priced around 60 bucks but then again it's still about seven dollars cheaper than the very popular satechi hub and that doesn't even have a drive bay so i guess despite what i think the price should be a product's value is whatever consumers are willing to pay for and i did buy it after all so if you're considering it buying it i hope this review helped in that decision you can find a link to the agp tech hub in the description below this is an affiliate link so any purchases made do help the channel out with no added cost to you also clicking that like and subscribing to the channel would be great too but that's it for this one guys i hope to see in the next one until then stay safe [Music] you

Channel: Elevated Systems

Views: 174,792

Keywords: agptek, m1 mac mini usb hub, Type-C Hub with Hard Drive Enclosure, TF/SD Card Readers USB 3.0/2.0 for New MM M1 Laptop (Silver for Mac Mini 2020), external ssd mac mini, best m1 macbook accessories, agptek usb-c docking station, AGPTEK USB-C Docking Station & Stand for Mac Mini M1, macmini, mac mini accessories, best mac mini accessories, mac mini m1 accessories, mac mini ssd upgrade 2020, 2020 mac mini accessories, mac mini hub, mac mini m1 hub, m1 mac drive wear

Id: o6ooXCIEqSk

Length: 11min 54sec (714 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 28 2021