The Basics:
Vantec includes everything you'll need to make the most of this device with one exception; a 2.5" HDD. Despite the size of the box, the enclosure itself is relatively small considering what it is designed to do. In fact it is barely bigger than the ME-910 enclosure reviewed in a previous round-up on Bigbruin.com (
link).
Vantec includes a power adaptor, USB cable, digital coax cable, component video cable, composite video and stereo cable, remote control, CD, and manual. The case appears to be well designed and made of quality components; the A/V cables are decent quality interconnects much like those supplied with a DVD player.
The front of the enclosure has three LEDs for Power, HDD and IR; the back has connections for USB, 5 VDC power, IR/5.1, SD/HD video and AV output. The USB is 2.0 compliant and uses a standard A to mini B; the other connections are 1/8" headphone style connections.
Installation:
This case does not require any tools to gain access to the HDD. You simply depress the tab on the back panel and the cover labeling the connections comes off. Then lift up on the top cover and you reveal the circuit board. Next I removed the board to take a look at how they packed so much into such a small space. Surprisingly, the architecture doesn't appear all that cramped as you can see in the pictures below. I installed a Hitachi Travelstar 5400rpm 40GB HD I had from a laptop. As expected this process was straightforward and assembly of the enclosure was easy and seems quite secure considering it has no screws (except for the ones holding the HDD).
Performance:
As mentioned, this device allows you to use a spare 2.5" HDD as a portable storage device and multimedia device. I thought it would be best to start discussing the simplest of its features first.
Storage:
The
Vantec AVOX Jukebox is USB 2.0 compliant and was instantly recognized by all computers running Windows XP. Unlike many of the other portables I have tested, this enclosure required the external power source on all laptops. Once connected however, the transfer speeds were quite fast. Using SiSoft Sandra to bench the enclosure I got the following results:
• Drive index of 26MB/s
• Estimated access time of 11ms
• Buffered read/write of 28/24MB/s
• Sequential read/write of 29/26MB/s
• Random read/write of 22/26MB/s
• Endurance factor of 3.4
This compares quite favorably with other drives tested previously.
