Introduction

First of all I would like to thank VIZO for providing this product for our review.

Vizo present Luxon External 3.5" HDD Enclosure featured with IDE & SATA interface. Serial ATA (SATA) hard drives feature faster speeds, easier configuration; it is the next generation that provides error free data transmission at high speed. The sturdy drive cage protects your hard drive while the aluminum case effectively draws away the heat, protecting your drive from overheating. With high-quality mirror finish & sleek stylish face and installation easily to carry conveniently.

About the company

VIZO Technology Corp. is a leading global manufacturer and designer of computer peripheral products serving customers around the world. They own the best team and complete innovation technology. Utilizing experiences for many years and sufficient mature skills, VIZO insists in developing value added, ideal based, zeal catered and optimum designed products for customers to meet mainstream demands.That's why they named VIZO.

VIZO provides the PC users a variety of PC DIY products and peripherals, including hard drive external enclosure, multimedia storage, front panel, mouse, PC fan, system cooling, cold cathode light, crystal neon light, card reader , USB hub, PC accessory and so on; Meanwhile, VIZO produces special effect products which can make your PC more stylish and unique.

VIZO's vision is to make customers enjoy the high quality PC stuff all the time. To carry out it, VIZO aims at non-stop improvement, continuous innovation, excellent design , firm development and quality-improving technology and keeps putting all our effort in research and development.For high product quality,VIZO insists in the strict quality control process and owns highly recommended global product approval.

Spesifications

Model: LUX-350SA-BK, LUX-350SA-BL, LUX-350SA-GY
Interface: USB 2.0 & SATA
Dimension: 210(L) x 125 (W) x 34 (H) mm
USB: Window 98SE/ME/2000/XP/Mac OS 8.6 & Above
Serial ATA: Windows 2000/XP/Mac OS 8.6 & Above

Product Features

Fully support 3.5" IDE or SATA Hard Drive
Support 480Mbps High Speed USB 2.0 and USB 1.1
Support 1.5Gbps High Speed Serial-ATA

4 functions in it :
USB to IDE HDD, USB to SATA HDD
SATA to IDE HDD, SATA to SATA HDD

Mirror finish & rich 3 colors (Black, Blue, Gray) available

Aluminum housing for excellent heat dissipation.

Support plug and play & hot swappable
Must be attached to hot swappable compliant host to enable hot swappable function.

Closer Look

Retail Front		Retail Back

Opened Box		Out Of The Box

The Luxon arrived in a very well packaged box. The weight of the package is very light. 1 pound. When the box was opened I have found a Luxon retail box. The box is very shiny and feels friendly. Above pictures demonstrate the box and out of the box contents.

Package Includes:
Enclosure, Power Adaptor, Power Cable, USB Cable, IDE Power cable, Sata Bracket, External SATA Cable, Internal Sata Cable, Internal IDE cable, User Manual, Screws package, Stand, Driver CD, Cleaning wiper.

Everything was packed nicely and nothing was wobbling around.

Front Right		Front		Left Side

When I took out the Luxon case it felt as cold as the cpu heat sink. I was amazed how light the shell was. Great slick design puts a smile on the face. Luxon comes with a stand. The stand has rubber holders that hold down the shell.

OOOOOO Shiney

Back		Side		Top		Bottom

On the back of the unit there are: Power connector, On/Off switch, SATA connector and USB 2.0 Connector.

On the top of the unit is a clear plastic strip, which lights on when the unit is in the operation condition.

Installation and Testing

Installing a hard drive was a breeze. I have used my Maxtor 6Y250M0 SATA(250 gig) drive for testing.

The hard drive sits on a metal platform, which observes the heat that is generated by the hard drive.

Opened Case		HD Harness

Back of the HD Harness		Getting Read to hook it up

Closing the case was really easy. Just 4 screws. Vizo provides a hex screwdriver and hex screws.

SATA Connector		Closing Luxon		Accurate Screw

Testing

I have used two systems to test Luxon.

Fujitsu

Pentium M 725 1.7 Ghz

DDR 512 MB 2.5-3-3-7 200mhz

Luxon Off		Luxon On

Pentium 4 HT 3. Ghz

Asus P4c800-E

DDR 1024 2.5-3-3-7 200 Mhz Dual Chan.

Laptop Testing

I performed 3 tests for each of the testing machines. I used Sandra and HD Tach. For HD Tach I have used 8mb and 32mb tests. For the laptop I used a USB connection and for the PC I used SATA. The results are captured below.

Sandra

From Sandra I got stable 29MB/s rating. This is a good sign comparing to the other drives which got a bursts at high as 52.2MB/s and with time lowered their stats to 30MB/s The Access time was 15 ms. Considering USB 2 caps at 400 Mbit/sec this is normal for the USB connected drives.

HD Tach

8mb test

HD Tach 8mb test showed an excellent 31.8 MB/s. Again the reading from 1 gig to 251 were nice and stable at 31.8 MB/s.

32mb test

The 32 MB test ran without any problem. I was impressed that the data did not change much. Again A+ for the stability of the transfer rate.

PC testing

PC testing went smooth also. No problems. I have used the SATA adapter, which was kindly provided by VIZO. It is a PCI adapter, which connects to the motherboard.

Sandra

Impressive stats were generated by Sandra. Our hard drives in the PC are Raid 1 2x36 GB SATA 150 Raptors. They are running at 10k rpm. As the expected the Luxon showed a burst of the stream in the begining but slowly started to degrade. Again this is expected for the SATA drives.

HD Tach

8mb test

8MB test showed some improvements. We went from 30 to 70 mb/s Not bad eh? Yes i think we found a best way to connect Luxon to pcs. USE SATA!

32mb test

The 32 MB test was successfully completed. We achieved an average of 69.9~70 MB/s rate. NOT TOO BAD FOR A 7800 rpm drive:)

I have included summary information from Sanda for your further reviewing below.

Final Testing

Our final test was to copy a folder of random files to and from the device. I have used a PC with a SATA connection to do this.

467mb 20 sec read

467mb 30 sec write

I also left the unit in the operation but idle state for 3 hours and it became hot to touch. This is do to the outer shell of the unit. The metal part of Luxon was acting as a heat sink cooler.

Conclusion

Well the fact that this is a relatively new product, I have to give it an 9/10. The look and the feel of the Luxon is great. Presentation of the product was excellent. Performance of the device was nothing less but spectacular! One thing that got us puzzled was the lack of the air ventilation and or airflow. It seems that is the unit would have some sort of fan in the rear or undeneeth, the cooling of the product would be improved.

A+ Great Product from VIZO.