Wow what an unexpectedly useful article! I have exactly this hub and wondered if I was imagining things. It absolutely has issues beyond that, for example I somehow managed to make a couple of ports unusable for micro-controller flashing even though they used to work just fine. For that price, it's an OK choice to low bandwidth stuff like periphery dongles and security keys, and the form-factor makes it easy to attach under desk or behind display. And buttons come in handy when you need to unpower a dev board. Anyone can recommend a similar shaped proper USB 3 hub off Ali?
I had the opposite problem actually I think. I have these small nano teensy USB things that are programmable similar to Arduino, but they have a poor negotiation at start. I was using these to automate keyboard activity, so when plugged in they appear as a USB HID.
This crappy 7 port hub is one of the only ones that "works" to reprogram the chips over USB. Direct connections and other hubs cause it to always appear as a HID and never appear as a thing that can be reprogrammed.