Raspberry Pi's Latest Launch Is a Compact, Four-Port, Power-Optional USB 3.0 Hub

Raspberry Pi has announced another new piece of hardware, and this time it's trying to make it easier for you to juggle your USB accessories with a four-port USB 3.0 hub supporting optional power for demanding devices.

"The Raspberry Pi USB 3 Hub provides extra connectivity for your devices, turning one USB [Type]-A port into four," the company explains of its latest hardware launch. "An optional external USB-C power input supports high-power peripherals. For lower-power peripherals, no external power is required. The USB 3 Hub has been tested to work seamlessly with all Raspberry Pi products."

The hub itself, a compact unit with short, retained cable to connect it to an upstream USB port, turns any single USB 3.0 port into four USB 3.0 ports supporting data transfer rates of up to 5Gb/s — though this, it must be remembered, is shared between all four ports. When connected to a 5V 3A USB Type-C power supply — such as the official Raspberry Pi 4 power supply — it can handle high-power peripherals, such as spinning-platter storage devices, or can drive low-power devices like keyboards and mice on its own.

Raspberry Pi's hardware launches have come fast and thick of late, though have primarily focused on accessories rather than new models of single-board computer: we've seen the release of the portrait-format 7" Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2, the up-to-26 tera-operations per second (TOPS) Hailo-8 powered Raspberry Pi AI HAT+, own-brand solid-state drives and matching kits for the Raspberry Pi 5, and even Raspberry Pi-branded microSD Cards — not forgetting, of course, the much-anticipated Raspberry Pi AI Camera Module, capable of running computer vision models on-sensor.

The Raspberry Pi 3 USB Hub is now available to order from the company's official resellers, priced at $12.