This review is part of the 1 Pound Challenge – can you find a decent gadget in a pound shop?

For the last of my current batch of 1 Pound Challenge products¹ I have the Livewire USB Hub (with 4 ports). Costing £1 from PoundWorld, this is a blue, translucent plastic hub which has a male USB connector on on end and then bulges out to house 4 females connections. Plug this into the side of a laptop or into a PC and it will convert a single port into 4.

As well as the hub itself you also get a 40cm USB extension cable, in case you cannot plug the hub directly into a port (surrounding connectors, for example, may not allow it).

The hub has 5 green LEDs in it – one for each of the USB connectors (i.e. 1 for the male socket and the remaining 4 for the female connectors at the other end).

So far, so good. Unfortunately, in use there are 4 big problem areas.

1. Build Quality

The plastic case around the male port has come unglued and doesn’t hold together well. As a result the whole circuit board, and the attached USB ports move around inside the case when in use. I’d have put this down as a one-off duff broken one if I hadn’t read reviews elsewhere of people having similar case issues.

Additionally, the USB extension cable has a rubber surround on each of the ends. This appears to be some poor quality rubber which already feels as if its degrading – it doesn’t bode well for any longer term usage.

2. It’s USB 1

Yes, that’s right, with USB 3 on the market and pretty much nothing these days is USB 1, they’ve somehow managed to sneak a USB 1 product out. That means anything connected to it will be slooowwww.

I don’t know if it’s only the device and not the cables that can be USB 1 or 2, but certainly using the cable I had no issues connecting up USB 2 devices.

3. Those LEDs!

The thing about USB hubs is that, unless they have their own power supply² you’re dividing up an already meagre power source – USB devices often struggle when plugging into hubs. That 5v supply is now down to, potentially, 1.25v per socket. However, with 4 LEDs lit that’s even less. The thing is, those LEDs are completely useless. All 5 come on when you plug it in and they don’t appear to do anything other than look pretty, yet, zapping what little power you did have.

4. Poor hardware support

I tried a couple of USB keys and really struggled to get any of them to be recognised – again reading other online reviews of this product backs this up as many other people have found them to be a hit-and-miss affair.

So all-in-all a pretty poor effort and a shame – for anyone wishing to enhance the number of USB connections they had this would have been ideal but all of those downsides above really mean that I can recommend this product.

The packaging shows the product is from ITP Imports, which shares an address with PoundWorld. ITP Imports have been in the news in the past for some suspect pregnancy testing kits and have to withdrawn dangerous items from sale (their “Deadly Dinosaurs” range turning out to be just that).

Summary of Livewire USB Hub

USB 1, seems to be dodgy at recognising hardware, poor build quality and zaps whatever power you may have wanted for your device on lighting unnecessary LEDs. Best left on the shelf.

Reviewed by David Artiss on 30th October 2011.

1. Yes, I need to find the time to head off to a major city and mooch around the pound shops for more products! [↩]
2. which is what I choose for all my own hubs [↩]

I have a bit of a zero tolerance when it comes to unsubscribing – if there’s no immediate option (i.e. either no option at all or only one that involves emailing them) then they get the SPAM button.

B&Q, thankfully, do have an immediate option (I’m not sure why I started getting emails from them – I reserved some items recently, but didn’t make any request for them to start emailing me as a result). However, I was met with the following message…

Now, that’s a lot of asterisks’. That email could be anything (and as it’s my own domain I could have a number of similiar email addresses set up – none of which may be distinguishable). Besides, why does it need to be covered up – other sites don’t do this?

Bizarre.

This review is part of the 1 Pound Challenge – can you find a decent gadget in a pound shop?

So far, it’s been quite a good hit rate with the products I’ve been reviewing as part of my 1 Pound Challenge – the majority have been rather good. And I’m happy to say that the trend is continuing.

I’ve now been taking a look at the Livewire Bluetooth USB Dongle – a tiny USB dongle that you plug into a PC or laptop to give it Bluetooth capability (in this case Bluetooth 2.0 and supporting voice data). It’s got a 100m range and 3mbps transfer rate. It cost £1 from PoundWorld.

I initially tried this on my wife’s Acer Aspire One and it worked immediately. It installed the appropriate drivers, the Bluetooth icon appeared in the system tray and everything worked as expected. Trying it on any of my other PCs or laptops – all running Windows 7 64-bit – failed, though. To be fair, the packaging does show compatibility with Windows up to (and not including ) Vista. This may be because of the built-in drivers that are part of Windows 7. Or that it’s 64 bit. Whatever the reason, it doesn’t appear to be Windows 7 compatible (and looking on the internet, other people are finding just the same).

The device is a tiny black plastic half circle (this is the bit that sticks out of the USB port) and a metal USB plug. The plastic has a number of ridges on it making it easy to grip for pushing in and pulling out. Unlike other similar products there is no blue flashing light built in (personally I see that as an advantage!)

The packaging shows the product is from ITP Imports, which shares an address with PoundWorld. ITP Imports have been in the news in the past for some suspect pregnancy testing kits and have to withdrawn dangerous items from sale (their “Deadly Dinosaurs” range turning out to be just that).

Summary of Livewire Bluetooth USB Dongle

If you’re not on Windows 7 this is brilliant value for money – it’s a particularly good way to add Bluetooth to a Windows XP netbook. If you have Windows 7 then buy with risk – it may not work.

Reviewed by David Artiss on 27th October 2011.