[rickdeckard]

My first thought whenever I come across such a badly-engineered no-name device is "oh great, another bad reference design which will poison the pool of all the available devices out there"

It helps a bit to spot and avoid that exact exterior design, but often those devices are designed to reuse the same mold as more-expensive ones and/or keep changing the design based on the purchasing customer.

So you end up on AliExpress looking at 5 identical hubs, but the cheapest one may have a different PCB inside.

Or you look at 5 different hubs, with all of them having the same PCB inside...

[avhception]

"Ah, that's Rev. B, yeah, known problem..." Like I could somehow buy by PCB rev. Sometimes they even swap entire controllers within the same Rev.

[rickdeckard]

That's the point, the dimension is "yeah, the ODM also offers a 2 USD cheaper hub that uses a USB2.0 controller for 7 of the 8 ports", and now you're browsing a list of equally looking products spanning 5 to 15 USD without a clue which of the straws you're going to pull...