Manufacturer Product Page: Thermaltake N0028USU SATA to USB 2.0 Hard Drive Enclosure
Product Number: N0028USU
Availability: Now
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Warranty Length: 3 years


When you think of Thermaltake you usually think of nice mid range PC cases, CPU cooling solutions and maybe even power supplies; you certainly wouldn’t be blamed for not thinking external drive enclosures. What Thermaltake is known for is being one of the leading designers of thermal management solutions and have been since they started business back in 1999. Since then they have branched out into many different sectors of the PC marketplace including power supplies, chassis and now even drive enclosures. They have been successful in some areas while falling a bit flat in others but one thing has been constant with Thermaltake over the years: they know how to innovate.

Usually, when a paradigm shift happens it is sudden, without warning and comes out of nowhere; leaving a market devastated in its chaotic wake and creating a new market niche in the process. These shifts usually center around groundbreaking new products which are sometimes so simple you wish you had thought of the idea first. At other times the certain markets drastically change through the natural progression of technology but there are always one or two companies spearheading the charge into the future. Luckily, the subject of this review is not quite to the level of a paradigm shift but after seeing it in action you may never look at a normal hard drive enclosure the same way again. This product is the result of Thermaltake striving to do something different in a storage market that has not seen much innovation of late.

Today we will be looking at Thermaltake’s unique take on external USB hard drive devices; namely the BlacX. This product is a 2.5 inch and 3.5 inch SATA hard drive USB docking station that retails for about $35.00. To be precise this is not an enclosure, this is a USB hard drive docking station and as such will have different strengths and weaknesses than the normal run of the mill hard drive enclosures. In this review we take an in-depth look at both its pros and cons and answer the biggest question of them all: who is this docking station really designed for and does it succeed at its intended goal?