RAVPower’s 6-Port Charging Filehub is a $36 charging brick that can back up your phone’s data to an external drive. While I wouldn’t use it in place of a proper USB-C hub, for what it is, the 6-Port Filehub is great.
In all honesty, I didn’t expect this device to be much of a winner. The file transfer features sound gimmicky, and the last RAVPower product I reviewed left a lot to be desired. But the 6-Port Filehub actually managed to exceed my expectations. Its ability to back up your phone’s files to an external drive is genuinely useful (albeit limited), and it makes for a great little charging brick.
Initial Impressions
The first thing I noticed from the 6-Port Filehub is its 4′ long power cable. The Filehub can comfortably plug into the wall with more than enough slack to move around on my desk. (I’m inclined to suggest this as a charging brick just for the long power cable.)
And of course, the second thing I noticed is the device’s instructions. They’re surprisingly clear, and I had to spend only about a minute in the manual to understand how each of the Filehub’s ports work. (We’ll get to the ports in a second.)
But I do have one tiny complaint. The instruction manual includes only the voltage and amperage of each port. It doesn’t detail wattage, which is how most people think of charging speeds. This isn’t a serious issue (you can multiply amps and volts to get watts), but including the wattage of each port in the manual would help some users understand the 6-Port Filehub a little bit better.
What Does Each Port Do?
All right, this device has six USB ports. At a glance, you can read how each port is labeled, but you can’t really tell what each one does. So, here’s a list of the six ports, with details on what they do, their data transfer rates, and their charging speeds. Keep in mind that most current-gen phones “quick charge” at between 12 and 15 watts. (Going over that wattage is fine because phones have built-in regulators.)
- Storage Port: This port is specifically for your external storage device, but it also works for charging at 4.5 watts (if you’re in a pinch). The highest capacity drive you can plug into this port is 8 TB.
- Phone Port: This port is specifically for transferring data between your phone and external storage device, but it also works as a 7.5 watt charging port. It’s capable of transferring data at 20 Mbps. (That’s 1 GB every 50 seconds.)
- Two iSmart Ports: iSmart is a RAVPower charging technology that automatically detects a device’s ideal charging voltage. Both of these ports are capable of charging at up to 12 watts.
- QC (Quick Charge) Port: The QC port can put out a maximum of 24 watts, which is a great future-proof measure for phones we’ll see in the 2020s. That said, if something is plugged into the USB-C port, this QC port can put out only 12 watts.
- USB-C “PD” Port: A straightforward USB-C port. It can put out a maximum of 24 watts, but it puts out only 12 watts when something’s plugged into the QC port.
While I’d be happy to trade one (or both) of the iSmart ports for another USB-C port, I do appreciate that this device gives you a lot of high-powered charging options. It’s also nice to know you can use all of the 6-Port Filehub’s ports at once without losing any charging speed (save for the USB-C and QC ports, which drop from 24w to 12w when multiple ports are in use).
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