Tried a cheap USB-C hub off Amazon and it fried my laptop port

I grabbed a $18 no-name hub from Amazon last month to hook up my monitor and keyboard to my ThinkPad. After 2 weeks the USB-C port started getting hot and now it won't charge or connect to anything. Anyone else had a cheap hub kill their port like this?

3 comments

3 Comments

simonp4716d ago

Yeah but it's not just the hub itself that's the problem. It's the power delivery spec. A lot of those cheap hubs don't have proper negotiation chips. So they try to pull more power than the port can handle. That heat you felt was basically your port melting from the inside.

rose_hart16d ago

Amazon's bargain bin strikes again. Right now your laptop's USB-C port is basically a tiny memorial to the $18 hub that killed it. The melting was just your port's slow way of saying "I have regrets." At least now you can upgrade to a proper dock with a power delivery chip that actually talks to your laptop instead of shouting at it. Thats the kind of lesson you only learn once, unless you buy another cheap one. Hope that ThinkPad is still under warranty or your wallet is ready to cry.

miles94615d ago

Simon's right about the power negotiation chips being the real issue. I had a similar thing happen with a cheap Anker clone a couple years back. The fix for me was getting a hub with a rated power delivery chip and making sure the wattage matched my laptop's specs. Check if your ThinkPad's port is still under warranty, some of those lenovo models have a separate warranty for the usb-c ports.

-1