AUKEY is pretty well-known for its popular chargers, battery packs, cables and other smartphone accessories. The company also creates some rather impressive USB hubs, and the PA-S10 PowerHub Mini is a great one to pick up, at least on paper. With it having two AC outlets and four USB ports, it appears to be a good hub to pick up in this day and age of many people needing to charge multiple gadgets each and every day. But how well does it stack up?
The AUKEY PA-S10, which we will refer to as the PowerHub Mini from now on, starts at around $19.99 on Amazon. Which is actually a pretty good price for what you’re getting here. As we mentioned already, there are two AC outlets here (while it takes up just one), as well as four USB ports at the bottom, which output at 2.4A or 6A total. So these are not Quick Charge capable USB ports, but these will work just fine for charging smartphones overnight. It’s a rather compact charger from AUKEY, considering how much power it actually has inside.
Since this is a compact PowerHub Mini from AUKEY, it makes it great for travel. Which is exactly what we did with it, during the review period. We’ve taken it on recent trips to different launch events, and it worked great in the hotel room. Seeing as hotel room outlets are usually pretty sparing, having this at our fingertips made sure that we were able to charge everything we needed too. It’s also small and compact, so it did not take up much space in our bag. The only thing that we would change with the PowerHub Mini is actually the fact that the outlet’s prongs are not foldable. If those were foldable, it would be perfect for travel. Of course, that would also make the outlet a bit bigger.
The four USB ports do face downwards, which seems like it wouldn’t be a good idea, but it does work to keep cable management top notch. Instead of having them coming out of the top of the charger, where cords could get tangled rather easily as well as look a bit more messy. Charging smartphones and other gadgets using these USB ports worked just as you’d expect. As mentioned already, these do not support Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 3.0, but it does output at up to 2.4A, which is on par with the speed of Quick Charge 2.0. So you’ll still get some fast charging, it’s just not Qualcomm’s standard. And if you’re charging overnight, that won’t matter that much, since your phone will still be charged when you wake up. Charging things like activity trackers, smartwatches and other gadgets also worked perfectly fine here. Now when it comes to the AC outlets here, that is definitely a nice touch. Especially since AUKEY didn’t just stick to giving us one outlet, but two. This is good because you can charge your laptop and still have another outlet for something else. It’s a good way to expand the outlets you have at home, without getting a huge 8-outlet surge protector, which we all likely have plenty of.
The actual PowerHub Mini is made fo plastic, and it’s only available in black. It actually looks pretty decent, but we did notice that the bottom part of the front is more of a shiny plastic, and it can get scratched very easily, as you’ll see in the images in the gallery below. The majority of those scratches came from traveling in a bag, so you can imagine how bad it’ll get after a ton of travel. But, it’s an outlet, so it’s not like this needs to be the best looking gadget in your bag – like your smartphone or laptop. Otherwise, the design is actually quite minimal and looks really good.
AUKEY’s PowerHub Mini is available for $19.99. That’s a pretty good price for what you’re getting here. It’s not quite a full USB hub nor a surge protector, but it offers up the best of both worlds. And with many gadgets charging over USB these days, there’s almost no need for plugging each gadget into its own outlet, when you can plug multiple USB cables into one outlet.
Buy the AUKEY PowerHub Mini
