Stop crawling under your desk! With the Ventev desktop charginghub S500

Written by Young Jeohn

How many times have you had to crawl under your desk to plug or unplug your phone charger? Or worse, found yourself leaning your phone or tablet against a wall or even on the floor while it charged? With no place to put your gear, your wall, table top or floor suddenly become a mess of gadgets and cables. And let's face it, in modern times like these, having power plugs and ports just isn't enough. And that's why Ventev created the desktop charginghub S500 - to make it easy for you to organize and charge your electronics - safely.

BASICS

In addition to providing power to three USB ports and two grounded plugs, the s500 is designed to hold your devices to keep them from sitting flat on the floor, waiting to be crushed by a passing foot or an accidental kick straight into the wall. The grooves are strong and sturdy, even holding up my 11" laptop without it tipping over. And I didn't even have to let go slowly (in case it fell) - it was stable enough for me to simply drop it in with confidence.

The only downer is that you're going to have to buy your own cables - though having said that, your wall receptacles don't come with cables either...

POWER

The base unit has three USB ports, with two of them sharing 2amps (so if both ports are plugged in and charging, they'll each give 1amp of juice that's typical of phone chargers) and one offering 2.4amps for quick charge devices or larger items like tablets. In addition, there are two regular wall plugs for whatever else you might want to charge or plug in. This design worked out really well for me, since I'm usually charging one or two phones via the USB ports and my laptop is sitting comfortably in the stand with the power adapter plugged into the three pronged receptacle.

My mind is also at ease knowing the s500 has a built in surge protector with lights indicating that protection is enabled.

DESIGN AND MATERIALS

As with all Ventev products I've come across, the build and material are of high industrial strength quality and design. The 5ft cord that plugs into the wall is heavy duty 16AWG, the kind used in construction for reciprocating saws and belt sanders - thick enough so that equipment doesn't burn out and the cord doesn't melt when the power draw is high. It's almost the thickness of my pinky finger!

The base uses several different materials from soft rubbery plastics in different shades of gray to a sandblasted metallic bottom rim. Unlike most electronic products being sold today, Ventev clearly marks the unit with power capabilities, going so far as to use color coding for easy differentiation. And again on the bottom of the s500, there's no super tiny print hiding power information, but has lettering large enough for human eyeballs to read comfortably.

CONCLUSION

The Ventev desktop charginghub s500 is a good looking, well designed product that safely and quickly charges your gadgets while removing the irritating step of having to crawl under your desk to plug and unplug chargers. It doesn't come with any cables (unless you count the 5ft power cord) so if you don't already have some, I'd recommend picking up really short ones since you'll most likely be putting your gadgets in the built-in stand.

The Ventev desktop charginghub s500 retails for $59.99 with more information available at: 

http://www.ventev.com