Review: The Huby is hunky but impractical
The Huby resembles a Christmas bulb ornament that’s grown tentacles. Designed exclusively for LaCie by Ora-Ãto, it has a round shape, glossy white polycarbonate finish, and flexible cables. You can connect up to six devices simultaneously. The Huby is bundled with eight flexible, twistable cables (five USB 2.0 and three FireWire 400), a USB fan, a USB light, a USB extension cable and a FireWire 400 extension cable. It comes with a two-year limited warranty.
With its white polycarbonate finish and flexible arms, the Huby is gorgeous to behold. And each connector features a uniquely colored USB status light, which is useful.
But it's there that the practicality ends. The expansion ports are at the end of the snaking arms that come with the Huby. You can choose which of the supplied arms to connect, but since the inputs are also arms, they have to snake down and backwards to your Mac, which is more than a little cumbersome. What's more, the arms are much shorter than I'd have preferred. Also, the Huby's base isn't very stable, so you'll have to do some less-than-graceful counterbalancing with the arms.
I do like the bundled fan and light -- except that you can't turn 'em off! There are no on/off switches, so you'll have to remove them from the Huby itself to power them down. Disconnecting and connecting items from the Huby requires unscrewing its two halves, another inconvenience.
Despite its many drawbacks, the Huby is, hands down, the best looking USB hub I've ever seen. Unfortunately, it's also one of the most impractical.
Macsimum rating: 5 out of 10 (10 for looks, 0 for functionality).