I want to connect 3 USB 3.0 devices to my MacBook Pro 2016. I'd like to do it through a single USB-C port using this a USB-C to 3 USB 3.0 hub like this one. Question!
When I connect a single 3.0 device through the hub the maximum theoretical speed is 5Gb/s, right?
If I connect two 3.0 devices and read from them at the same time. Will each of them still transfer data with the speed of up to 5Gb/s or is it going to slow down? In other words, when the device says it provides 4 3.0 ports, does it use 3.0 protocol to talk to the laptop, and thus has to 'share' the 5Gb/s bandwidth among all the devices? OR does it take advantage of the usb-c port. In the case of the latter, does it then have 10 Gb/s to distribute (usb 3.1 protocol) or 40(thunderbolt 3).
Best Answer
You won't get faster than USB 3.0 speed on the link to the Mac or any of the hub links. (You'd need a thunderbolt 3 hub for that.)
Theoretically - when you have a hub, there is overhead and losses and those depend on the quality of the chipset in the hub.
In practice - what is going to be providing or consuming data at even 3 Gb/s - not much. Get the hub you like for the support and price and warranty and when you have an actual performance issue - you can profile it and get a second hub or offload the one device to another port.