ATEN US3344i

#industrial

There are times when cheap USB hubs and switches are perfectly fine, and other times when you really need to step up your game and make sure your gear is up to the task at hand. Of all of the USB products I have personally tested, ATEN International seems to consistently have robust and unique solutions that look fit for any reasonable work environment. They’re not the cheapest, most lightweight or smallest options out there for the task at hand, but that’s exactly the point.

The US3344i is a four input, single bus switch that allows switching your connected USB 3.1 devices between four different host computers. In my testing, the unit performs just like any other USB 3 hub I have used in the past, working with all of the typical devices I use creating content and working with media. Special attention needs to be paid to ejecting disks properly if you choose to connect storage devices, as switching the devices to another machine on the fly will force eject the disks no matter what you might be writing to them.

Click Here to Watch on Mobile

Local switching is a nice trick and is made easy with the simple push button included in the box. The real fun starts though if you have a need for a switch that can be controlled remotely via serial bus commands. RS422 & 485 serial input means this unit can be used to automate switching between more complex workspace configurations. While there is no power supply included in the box, there are redundant power inputs with the primary 12V barrel jack input failing over to the terminal block connector which happily accepts between 9 – 24 volts DC. You can find specifics and detailed specs in the owners manual here as well as the official ATEN US3344i page.

If you’d like to see more from ATEN, you can check out my first look of their Thunderbolt 3 Multiport Dock

For a less industrial version of the same four input to four computer switching, you can find products from StarTech as well as Rosewill at a much lower cost that may fit your needs. Both units linked here are far less heavy duty and lack pro features like power redundancy, but are highly rated in reviews.