The Basics:

First impressions of the FCR-HS4 is that it is fairly large compared to other USB card readers. I have been using a Kingston MobileLite G3 for a while now, and that one is far more portable than the FCR-HS4. But, this new reader from Kingston is definitely nicer as a permanent addition to my desktop, and sits nicely under my monitor while allowing convenient access to read my most common card formats.



The above left image shows a top view of the card, which has a brushed metal appearance, with something like an arrow fashioned from white hexagons, as well as a red Kingston logo. We will see later that this logo lights up when in use. The above right image shows the front of the reader with the four well labeled slots for your cards.

The images below show angled views of the reader, and of particular interest is the below right image where we can see the USB 3.0 connector found centered on the back of the housing.



The next image shows a 32GB Class 10 Kingston SDHC card that they were nice enough to include for testing.



And finally, we see the red Kingston logo lit up when in use. It is definitely useful to gauge transfer activity, but I'd honestly prefer something more subtle.