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If you don't want to buy more expensive active USB Power Delivery based hubs, you can use the Urban Factory Type-C Hub TCH02UF with your USB Type-C based tablets and notebook PC's. The Urban Factory Type-C Hub TCH02UF offers a simple approach to support charging over USB Type-C without having to use active USB Power Delivery negotiation. The hub when plugged in with a USB Type-C AC charger just uses simple CC line voltage levels to communicate as it passes USB Type-C signals from the charger to the attached PC or tablet.

The Urban Factory Type-C Hub TCH02UF is similar with certain USB Type-C chargers in the market that don't support active USB Power Delivery such as the Native Union Smart 4 Charger, Ozuma AC Charger ACU-TC34ADK and Perigears 15W USB-C Wall Charger although these other chargers only offer 15 watts of charging which is not enough to charge larger batteries found in tablets and notebook PC's.

We bought the Urban Factory Type-C Hub TCH02UF after dropping by Fry's Electronic USB-C Products recently to have a closer look.

The Urban Factory Type-C Hub TCH02UF comes with only a quick guide and has an affixed Type-C connector on one side of the hub to attach to a Type-C PC or tablet. The hub also provides three additional USB Type-A ports so you can charge four devices at the same time. You can also use the Type-A ports to transfer data between the PC and USB drives. Note that the Type-A ports only support USB 2.0 speeds.

The other Type-C port is used to charge the hub itself when connected to a separate Type-C AC charger.

The hub's design doesn't really suit dual Thunderbolt 3 enabled Mac's or some Windows PC's where when attached it covers up the other Thunderbolt port on the computer so it can't be used. The Thunderbolt port from the computer also gets downgraded to just a single USB 3.1 Gen 1 and several USB 2.0 ports and when the computer is pulling all the power offered by the AC charger connected to this hub, there won't be enough power to support the other USB ports.