Inateck USB 3.0 Gigabit Ethernet Converter
The main laptop that I use is a MacBook Air. It is a really great device, very portable, well engineered, and very fast for the purposes of the main tasks I use it for – word processing, email, web surfing, some light photo and video editing. However, its lightness and portability come at a price – MacBook Air is extremely ports-deficient. It has only two USB ports, one SD card slot and a small headphones jack. Most of the times when I use it none of this lack of ports bothers me, but there are situations when I need to use more than two USB devices at the same time, or connect to the Internet via a wired connection. This small Inateck USB/Ethernet hub seemed like an ideal accessory to have around. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get ethernet working.
I am running Mac OS-X Mavericks on all of my computers. I’ve connected bot my MacBook Air and Mac Mini to this adapter, but neither one of them was able to recognize the ethernet connection. (The USB hub part was fine.) The adapter comes with no printed instructions, and the pdf manual is very sparse and very clearly geared to Windows computers.
In order to see if I didn’t by any chance get a defective unit, I connected this adapter to my Windows 8 machine. The adapter was recognized immediately without any need for the installation of the driver software. The Ethernet connection was extremely smooth and fast, and I didn’t see any difference as compared to getting online through the dedicated Ethernet port.
The three USB 3.0 ports have functioned splendidly, both on my Mac and Windows computers. They really help with the additional connectivity, without the need for external power. The USB strip is fairly compact, so you would not want to connect any bulkier USB devices to it.
This could have been a really great overall adapter, but unfortunately right now I cannot recommend it to any Mac users out there. The users of Windows ultrabooks, on the other hand, should really appreciate all the additional connectivity that this adapter offers.
**** Product provided for review purposes. ****
There are no comments yet, add one below.