The listing says the hub subtracts 8W when charging through the hub, be aware that it's actually 15W, not 8W. I've contacted CableCreation (to which they quickly replied) and they've confirmed 15W is the intended value: 10W (5Wx2) is dedicated to the two type A ports and 5W for the hub and other ports. This means that if you plug in a 20W Power Delivery (PD) charger in, you can only get 5W to the host device; this is dictated via the PD protocol, I have not tried to see what happens if you draw over with a dummy load. Their reasoning for the reduced watage is safety, which makes sense (100W charger, 5W hub and 100W host means overpower protection should trigger on the charger), but a more dynamic solution depending on what is connected, instead of a fixed -15W would be preferable. This also means if you don't use a PD capable, but a normal or QuickCharge (QC3 and below? QC4 should be compatible with the PD protocol) power supply, you can only get a measly 0.5W to the host, which is not enough to offset host battery drain. A 18W PD power supply to the hub is not enough to offset the drain of a Samsung Note 9 using Samsung Dex, it's battery will slowly drain.
I do not know if the power subtraction is normal for type C hubs with passthrough charging since this is my first one, but it is reassuring they've considered the safety aspect. This issue will probably not matter a lot later on when higher wattage PD power supplies are the norm.
The included cable won't fall out on its own it is securely held in there by friction. It has an e-marker indicating it is USB3.1 Gen 2, 0-1m and capable of handling up to 5A. There is a groove on the "back" of the hub where you can use your fingernail to pry out the cable.
The cable being detachable is really nice, I'm able to use my own 2m type C cable with a 5m (2m + 3m joined) HDMI cable just fine (tested with LG C9 4K TV, an AOC 1080p monitor, Samsung Note 9, Lenovo Yoga 7i 15" Slate Grey, Gigabyte Z170MX rev1.0 and MSI RTX 2070 Gaming Z). I can confirm the hub only does 4K 30Hz, 1080p can do 120Hz (limit of the LG C9).
The hub is capable of outputting HDMI and VGA (1080p and 1680x1050) at the same time (mirror only) while not affecting Ethernet or USB speeds.
The microsd slot can transfer a 3.8GB solid file at around 85MB/s using a SanDisk Extreme Pro U3 64GB, which is the same speed my other reader can do. Note that from the same host port, my external NVME drive can do around 700MB/s for a 9.6GB solid file, so 85MB/s is either the limit of the reader in the hub or my microSD (I am doing a read from the microSD to a Samsung 970 Evo NVME M.2 internal drive).
I get the same speed from the USB interface. Plugging in a mouse, Ethernet or display doesn't affect the speed.
The ethernet port can do 108MB/s when I test with my NAS, which is the same as when I bypass the hub, so my NAS is the limiting factor. I would not be surprised if the ethernet port is capable of 1Gb/s speed as advertised, given the overall quality of the hub.
Weirdly when you power the hub, the RJ45 (Ethernet port) light flashes once.
Overall, it's a bit pricely, but well designed and a unique type C hub.
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