Phobya Touch 6 Fan Controller Review

Phobya’s Touch 6 fan controller costs £36.29 in the UK currently and €40 in Europe. This makes it one of the more expensive six channel fan controllers on the market, being priced higher than the famous Lamptron FC6, which costs around £30, though for a full touch display fan controller with such a large LCD and a fully brushed aluminium front bezel this price is actually very reasonable.

The Phobya Touch 6 certainly strikes me as quite a high end fan controller and it reminds me of the Lamptron CW611 in aesthetics except it does lack any buttons. If you are looking for a fan controller that looks more expensive than it actually is then the Phobya Touch 6 certainly fulfils that function. That said it isn’t just style over substance either as the build quality was very good. True you can see where some money has been saved, such as a lower quality glossy LCD to enhance brightness, an unpainted blue PCB, a plastic frame to save on aluminium material costs, no supplemental temperature/fan extension cables for large cases.

However, you still get a lot of good stuff with up to six fan channels supporting 30 watts each, a fully aluminium front bezel, a large touch input LCD, six temperature probes (most fan controllers at this price point do not have so many temperature probes), an ability to control each channel independently of the others, temperature targets and high quality sleeved cables. Furthermore this is all enhanced by the excellent £30 price point.

Pros

• Excellent price
• Aluminium front bezel
• Braided/sleeved cables
• Temperature sensors
• Nice touch screen LCD display
• Hardware level on/off for speaker
• 1 or 2 year warranty (depends on retailer)
• Stable voltages

Cons

• Blue PCB
• Plastic frame
• Glossy display can lead to glare
• Cables only 60cm long, no extension cables for larger cases
• Cable sleeving isn’t secured, moves around when cables are gripped/under pressure by installation
• Some touch inputs don’t register, have to push quite firmly
• Slight lag in input changes to resultant output fan speeds

eTeknix says: Phobya’s Touch 6 is an excellent attempt at creating a premium looking and feeling fan controller for those on a tight budget. With the flexibility to control six fans, monitor the temperature of six different case locations and do this all with a decent sized touch-screen LCD display – the Touch 6 is turning out to be a bit of a winner. To the eagle eyed you will notice the few corners that have been cut to keep the price down but this certainly doesn’t affect the products overall build quality, performance or aesthetics. Phobya have done an excellent job to balance all the key features of a premium fan controller with a reasonable price.

Thanks to Aquatuning for providing this review sample.