Thinkpads Forum

As tittle says, I am interested in your experiences with upgrading the L540 with USB 3.0 express card to get more USB 3.0 ports.

Which card/brand?
Size?
Number of extra ports?

Overall experience?

Will it work under Linux Mint 20.2 or newer?

Thank you in advance

Jan

Having used a USB 3.0 Expresscard in my first X220 a few years ago, here are my thoughts:

* doesn't supply enough power for portable hard drives (which was my primary use case). Had to use a USB 3.0 Y-cable to draw extra power from the laptop's USB 2.0 port. Note that this is a limitation of the Expresscard interface, and other USB 3.0 cards actually have a tiny barrel jack to get 5V power elsewhere.

* When you pull out a USB 3.0 cable or device, sometimes the card gets pulled out as well. It's very annoying when that happens.

* card draws power and heats up even when there's no USB device plugged in; therefore it's better to just keep the card inserted most of the way in until you're going to use it.

Bottom line: it works when it works, but it's a tacked-on solution that's nowhere as convenient as the built-in ports. I only put up with it because that X220 didn't have USB 3.0, and when that laptop started getting flaky, I replaced it with an X220 i7 model (which has one USB 3.0 port).

Note that I used the card on Windows 7 and Debian. It didn't work at first with Debian, but a kernel upgrade got it up and running. These days there shouldn't be any issue with USB 3.0 Expresscards.

I would consider an ExpressCard solution (which has the limitations mentioned by axur-delmeria), if I needed it on the road.
When used on the desk, I would suggest a USB 3.0 hub plugged into the main USB 3.0 port on the laptop, or a dock.