Kingston Workflow Station Hub + Readers Review 6

Kingston Workflow Station Hub + Readers Review

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Value and Conclusion

  • The Kingston Workflow Station and USB miniHub combination sells for $135.20 from the Kingston store, with the SD and microSD card readers costing $36.40 each for customers in the USA, as of the date of this review.
  • Good value for the feature set
  • Modular nature allows for users to mix and match readers to fit their workflow needs
  • Excellent performance for USB and SD/microSD cards up to the UHS-II class
  • Universal power compatibility because of the provided wall adapters
  • Individual readers can be used by themselves and are extremely portable
  • Build quality feels cheap owing to the lightweight plastic construction
  • Fairly niche product that could be supported better with more reader units
It's easy to dismiss the Kingston Workflow family of products unless needed, which I suppose could be said of anything. But I dare say that many with even a casual interest in these products would look at the pricing and scoff at it. Allow me to add some context. Based on personal experience, a typical Thunderbolt 3 dock that costs about the same will either not have a memory card reader or a terrible one. Dedicated memory card readers in the UHS-II range can cost more than the readers here, and USB docks with similar/fewer ports can actually cost a lot more if you go with products from the usual photography/videography providers. You will get better build quality and sometimes even an in-built backup drive, but the cost will be exponentially higher compared to the fully equipped Kingston Workflow Station at ~$200 in the USA, or even less in other regions.

If you compare to the UHS-II readers that get thrown in with higher-end memory cards, for example, the Kingston Workflow isn't the best deal. For many users, including professionals, those individual readers are fine. But when time is money for professionals who tweak their editing software workflow to save seconds at a time, a modular station catering to USB drives and external HDD/SSDs for backups while importing contents on primary and secondary memory cards with the optional reader is suddenly a really good, budget-friendly solution compared to nearly everything else available today. I wish Kingston would sell the USB miniHub separately, as well as a combo pack with at least the SD card reader, which would have really made this more attractive as a USB dock for others than professional content creators. At the same time, catering to the pros and not having a CFExpress reader option also seems weird, but the company perhaps does not sell those cards themselves. As it is, the Kingston Workflow Station is not for most people out there. That said, it does a darn good job for those it does work for!
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Nov 24th, 2024 09:06 EST change timezone

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