Introduction
I would like to say a big "Thank you" to SunbeamTech for providing us with a Airbox 3.5" for today's review. Airbox 3.5" is an external hard drive enclosure which provides its users with portability of the file storage. For some it is very important to have an enclosure which they can transport to and from a particular location. If you are a graphics designer or a music/sound engineer then you know what i am talking about. Let us take a closer look at the Airbox 3.5" and see what it has in store for us.
About the Product
Following information is taken from the SunbeamTech website.
Overview
The "Airbox" 3.5"; eSATA and USB external enclosure is constructed with an all aluminum housing, and combined with the 8cm LED fan that blows cool air directly onto the hard drive inside, your hard drive is well protected from over heat and instability. Supporting up to 1.5TB in hard drive capacity, this tech-chic external enclosure comes with cool blue LED with and a control button to turn ON and OFF the LED fan's light to suit your mood. Where performance, stability, and looks matters, the "Airbox" external enclosure is the best choice for you.
Features
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LED fan with ON/OFF
switch for the LED |
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*2 |
Supports up to 1.5
TB hard drives |
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Small design for
easy portability |
Supports eSATA and
USB 2.0 interfaces |
Maximum transfer rate:
eSATA: 3Gbps
USB 2.0: 480Mbps
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*1 Hot-Swappable: Plug And Play without rebooting
*2 Aluminum housing helps to quickly dissipate heat
Specifications
Part number |
EN-AIR-ES3-BK |
Color: |
Black
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Interface |
USB 2.0 & eSATA |
Supported drive size |
3.5” SATA I/II
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Material |
Aluminum (except the front / back panels and thermal relief holes) |
Maximum transfer rate |
eSATA: 3Gbps
USB 2.0: 480Mbps
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Fan Speed |
1600RPM +/- 10% |
Front Indicator Light |
Power On: steady blue light
Disk Access: flashing blue light
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Power Supply |
100V-240V
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Dimensions |
203(L) x 126(W) x 44(H)mm |
Weight: |
435g
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Supported OS |
Windows 2000(SP4)/ME(SP2)/XP/VISTA
Linux 2.4.1.0 or higher
MAC OS 8.6 or higher
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Package Contents
1. Airbox and Mounting stand x 1 |
2. USB cable x 1
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3. eSATA cable x 1 |
4. Power adapter x 1
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5. Accessory pack x 1 (screws and screws driver) |
Now that we got basic information out of the way, lets take a closer look at SunbeamTech Airbox 3.5" enclosure.
Closer look
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Front Shot |
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Back Shot |
Airbox 3.5" comes in rather stylish box. Vivid images of the actual unit could be found on the front and the back of the box. SunbeamTech is using a blue pattern light scheme for this product and with bright images it catches the customers eye. The package is very busy as far as the imagery. It including alot of information about the product and some of its signature features and specifications.
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Features and Specifications |
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Package Contents |
On the sides of the box we found alot of information about Airbox 3.5". Pretty much on every side of the package we found Specifications and Features along with Package Contents and Operation Features. This package contains a few logos and we admire that in the marketing. Having too many logos on your package doesn't improve your sales but only make it harder to sell the item.
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Out of the box |
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Airbox 3.5" |
SunbeamTech has included a number of accessories with Airbox 3.5" such as USB 2.0 cable, eSATA cable, instructional manual, a stand and a power adapter. One of the important features here is the included screwdriver and mounting screws. At times you don't have a screwdriver ready and this one definitely comes handy while installing a hard drive.
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Right Side Shot |
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Left Side Shot |
The actual Airbox 3.5" is an aluminum based unit which promises a better cooling experience for your hard drive. Powered by an 80 mm fan, Airbox 3.5" will keep your hard drive nice and cool. The fan could be seen on the right side of the unit as it gloves light blue color while operation. On the left side of the unit there aren't any markings or logos. When handling the unit it feels cool, probably because of the aluminum shell.
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Front Shot |
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Rear Shot |
The front and back of the Airbox 3.5" are made of plastic and that factor stands out like a sore thumb. No one want a plastic part when it comes to an aluminum shells. The front side has an activity "strip" which is tied in with the hard drive. With this feature you can see the activity of your hard drive. On the back of the Airbox 3.5" we found a Power Switch, Power Connector, eSATA connector, USB 2.0 connector and Fan-LED switch.
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Hard Drive Tray |
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80mm Fan with Blue LED's |
Hard drive tray is also made out of plastic. I am not sure why SunbeamTech decided to go with plastic here. Don't you get better cooling of the hard drives with an aluminum sled? As mentioned earlier Airbox 3.5" is powered with 80mm fan which rotates at 1600 rpm. Running Airbox 3.5" with fan ON will keep your hard drive temperatures around 40 C. If without the cooling fan being on, then you are looking at 53+ C. So no brainier here. Run it with the fan:)
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Hard Drive tray IO board |
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Hard Drive mounting |
Hard Drive tray IO board is pretty standard. As we cant discuss on that kind of chipset it is using, lets leave it at that. Mounting the hard drive is pretty easy. It requires you to open a while unit up. Hard Drive fits right on top of the fan for better cooling experience.
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Hard Drive installed |
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Assembled |
Once installed, the Hard Drive fits like a glove and slides nicely in to the enclosure. For additional stability, SunbeamTech included a stand which help dramatically while operating this unit. The whole installation take close to 3 minutes and we are ready to take a look at some performance data of Airbox 3.5".
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Ready to rock |
Testing
| ASUS P5K-E LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard |
| MSI RX2600XT Diamond Plus Radeon HD 2600XT 512MB 128-bit GDDR4 PCI Express x16 HDCP |
| Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz LGA 775 Quad-Core Processor |
| 4 Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB 7200 RPM SATA-300 Hard Drive |
| 2 OCZ Reaper HPC 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit |
Our standard testing procedure for enclosures is performing 8mb and 32mb test with HD Tach. HD Tach benchmarking is recognized across many review organizations and we honor it.
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USB 2.0 8Mb vs 32Mb |
The first benchmark we have performed was over USB 2.0 channel 8mb and 32mb. As you can see from the screen shot above, average read speed was 34.7 MB/s . This is pretty much standard speed considering USB 2.0 connection. The burst speed was in between 35.4 MB/s and 36.1 MB/s.
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eSATA 8Mb vs 32Mb |
Our next benchmark we have performed was over the eSATA channel. In this benchmark we got average read speed of 98.7 MB/s. The burst speed of the Airbox 3.5" on eSATA channel was and average of 198.85 MB/s. The burst speed is pretty much the highest you can get on eSATA channel.
Conclusion
Airbox 3.5" is a well build unit and deserves attention in the market. It is rather stylish unit which has a great cooling and also very quiet. Alot of the external enclosures we have dealt with are pretty loud when it comes in the operations. Running at 1600 rpm, Airbox 3.5" fan keeps the hard drive temperature cool, therefore prolonging the life of your hard drive. There are few things that could be improved in this unit. One thing that we noticed is that the hard drive tray was made out of plastic. By having an aluminum tray we strongly believe that the temperature of the hard drive could be kept much lower. The average read speed while using Airbox 3.5" was not impressing. I am not sure what went wrong, either our systems fault or the Airbox 3.5" but keep in mind that the average read speed should be doubled of the USB 2.0 average speed. Over all Airbox 3.5" has performed to our expectations and deserves a chance.
Some pros we found:
Light weight.
Silent operation.
Stylish design.
Some cons we found:
Hard drive caddy made out of plastic.
Front and back of the unit is made out of plastic.
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