VIZO Luxon Advanced ED
Submitted by jwhitakr on Mon, 09/28/2009 - 19:40
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The VIZO Luxon Advanced ED Enclosure is a great way to tidy up your computing area and connect your external hard drive with either eSATA or USB connectins. The Luxon comes in two colors, blue and black, and makes for an attractive enclosure that fits standard 3.5 inch hard drives with SATA connections. Read on as we take a closer look.
Design
The VIZO Luxon comes with the enclosure itself with eight screws for the enclosure cover and securing the hard drive to it, eSATA cable, USB cable, power adapter, instructions and a hex screw driver. The enclosure uses two sets of screws; one a Philips set for securing the drive in place and the other the hex or allen head that secures the cover.
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| Overhead View | What's In the Box | View of the Connections |
Installation and Setup
Installation of your drive is simple, place the drive in the enclosure and slide to connect the SATA power and data connections into the enclosure connections and secure the drive with the Philips screws. The cover goes on easily but the allen screwdriver that comes with it may not give enough torque, I had to use a regular 2mm allen wrench to drive in the screws.
Once the cover is on all you have to do is plug in the power adapter and the USB or eSATA cable to an open connection on your computer and your system should detect the drive. I found if using the eSATA you had to go to device manager and scan for plug and play devices but the USB simply installed like a flash drive would.
If you don’t have an available eSATA connection you can purchase a PCI-E or other eSATA adapter but the eSATA does not work all that much faster than the USB connection. I ran some comparison tests using both eSATA and USB as well as the VIZO USB Turbo program to see how fast my drive would be.
Features
- Compatible with 3.5" SATA Hard Drive
- Support 480Mbps High Speed USB 2.0 and USB 1.1
- Support 3.0Gbps High Speed external Serial-ATA ( eSATA )
- Real 3Gb/s Chipset for eSATA speed
- Aluminum housing for excellent heat dissipation
- Side vents improve convection for better system cooling
- LED light indicates working status and file transfer
- Stylish outlook with sleek design
- Support plug and play & hot swappable (Must be attached to SATA 3.0G/eSATA 3.0G hot swappable compliant host to enable hot swappable function)
Specifications
- Case Material : Aluminum
- Host Interface: 480Mbps USB 2.0 (USB 1.1 Compatible) 3.0Gbps High Speed external Serial-ATA ( eSATA )
- HDD Type : 3.5 " SATA Hard Drive ( Maximum capacity up to 1.5TB )
- Power Supply : AC/DC Power Adapter ( AC input: 100~ 240Vac , DC output: +12V, 2A )
- Indicators : Blue for Power on / Purple for file access
- Available colors : Black, Blue
- Model No. : LUE-360-BK, LUE-360-BL
- Weight : 400 g (without HDD)
- Dimensions : 210(L) x 125 (W) x 34 (H) mm
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| Rear View | Drive Installed | Bottom View |
Performance Testing
Test Setup
- Motherboard: ECS P45T-A
- CPU:Intel E6600 @ 2.9 Ghz
- Memory: 4GB DDR2 RAM Crucial
- Hard Drive: Seagate SATA 250GB 7200RPM
- CPU Cooler: Thermaltake Spin Q
- Power Supply: Tuniq Ripper 1000 watt
- OS: Windows Vista Premium
The tests I performed using SiSioftware Sandra Pro show the drive performed well as would be expected using both eSATA and USB connections. The read and operations per minute tests using the Removable and Physical Drive tests show pretty average results with the eSATA connection being the best of course.
I checked other drives using both internal and external enclosures and found these are about average for a lower cost drive that I installed. The enclosure performs well and works as it should but the Turbo HDD program does not really improve performance all that much.
The Luxon drive enclosure comes with instructions for downloading and installing a VIZO Turbo HDD program that is supposed to improve performance on a USB connection. I found this program did not improve my performance but this may be due to the fact that I already have USB 2.0 on my system.
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VIZO Luxon Advanced ED Hard Drive Enclosure
The Luxon Advanced ED enclosure works well as a stand alone eSATA or USB drive enclosure and is very simple to use as well as having the two connections for a versatile peripheral. I found the enclosure easy to setup and use as well as being good looking sitting on my desk.
Pros: Easy and quick setup, dual connections, good looking.
Cons: You may have to scan for hardware using eSATA.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
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