Inateck HB3001G OTG USB Hub & Card Reader Review

Performance & Mobile Impressions

Since the Inateck HB3001G OTG Hub and reader doesn’t connect to a normal PC, I’ll be using a Medion branded Lenovo LifeTab S7322. It features a quad-core ARM Cortex A9 1.6GHz CPU, 1GB RAM and 8GB internal flash – but most importantly, it has OTG support.

Benchmarking the connected devices sadly didn’t work and resulted in app crashes every single time. But this isn’t the device’s fault as the same thing happens when one tries to benchmark the built-in SD card slot.

The first thing I did was to find every single USB drive and memory card I have, and I tried them all. You can see a small portion of the devices tested that I tested in the photo above and it included docking stations, USB hard drives as well as flash drives and memory cards.

If your USB settings are limited to ‘charging only’, you’ll need to change that again. Otherwise, the whole thing is plug and play and the notification area will tell you what to do and where to go.

I really hate typing on touchscreens, it’s just not my thing. OTG is my saviour as it allows me to connect my USB keyboard and mouse directly to my tablet. My default USB keyboard worked right away and just as great as it would on any normal computer, and the wireless keyboards with USB receiver did too. Both my Logitech K800 and K400 were found instantly and so were my Logitech G700, G9, G500 and M505 mice.

Android also allows you to change the keyboard layout to match your physical version. A small, but very useful thing. Other functions like auto-replace and auto-capitalisation work just as good as they do with the on-screen keyboard

Android has a little design flaw when you connect USB flash drives. The settings interface will label a connect USB drive correctly as USB storage, but refers to it as an SD card. This can be confusing for the user but is an Android issue and not due to the hub I’m testing.

It is amazing how much functionality can be added to your smartphone and tablets with this little wonder of technology. The productivity you can achieve with those devices grows immensely when paired with and OTG hub.