Enermax Mighty Charger ECR301 & ECR 501 Card Reader and Front Panel Review

A Closer look at the Mighty Charger ECR301 & ECR501

The Enermax ECR301 card reader fits right into any 3.5-inch external drive bay instead of the long obsolete floppy drive. The unit is very simple but provides a lot of connectivity including a USB charging port with that extra power to effectively charge power hungry devices such as tablets.

The ECR301 card reader is using one of the two available USB3 connection while the second is used as a direct front connection. It further has three normal USB 2.0 ports besides the charging port and one eSATA.

The ECR301 is built as a closed construction, but opening it up we see that the insides are just as simple as the outside. A basic setup that will work equally well in all setups. It consists of two printed circuit boards placed on top of each other. The top one is holding the eSATA port and the card reader in a dual-sided setup while the bottom PCB has the all the USB connectors mounted.

It consists of two printed circuit boards placed on top of each other. The top one is holding the eSATA port and the card reader in a dual-sided setup while the bottom PCB has the all the USB connectors mounted.

The Enermax ECR501 5.25-inch card reader has a very similar layout, it just has a little bit more of everything. The ECR501 has a total of five normal USB 2.0 ports, two more than the 3.5-inch version and has the ability to read Extreme Digital cards as mentioned earlier.

The ECR501 also features a two PCB design with the card reader and eSATA port on the top and USB ports on the bottom PCB.

Both readers are using the Genesys Logic GL3220 Mulit-LUN card reader controller that is naturally able to handle almost any card format. The rest of the connection will be directly connected to the motherboard or other controller and thereby have no need for any additional hardware. The GL3220 is a great little controller supporting most card formats as well as firmware updates through USB in case that ever should be needed.

The GL3220 is a great little controller supporting most card formats as well as firmware updates through USB in case that ever should be needed.

Both card readers also feature the same type of connectors, dual USB 2.0 and a dual USB 3.0 headers for the card reader and USB ports while the eSATA connection is basically just a port adapter and will be connected directly to an internal SATA port.

Stable power for all the normal USB ports and the extra charging port, as well as the card reader, is provided by a 4-pin Molex connector with passthrough.

The ECR501 has so much spare room behind the panel, it would be a shame to waste. Enermax must have thought the same and the added the ability to mount up to three hard drives in this unit.

Two 2.5-inch drives fit into the bottom part and a 3.5-inch right on top. Enermax was also kind enough to include enough screws for all of this, a thing that some manufacturers sometimes forget.