Products like the HDD dock that we’ve looked at here don’t normally have a lot to shout and rave about, but it’s always good to see how they do fair up in respect to the other offerings available. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t look at them as [like all things] some are going to be better than others and the BlacX 5G is one example that does exactly as it says on the tin.
Whilst the design doesn’t hold any thrills, it is simple and to the point and that’s what I like about it. The nice touch with the inclusion of the two silicon jackets makes for easier removal of drives after use when they may be a little more on the toasty side, whilst at the same time, protecting them from light knocks when docked.
The main area that we have to look at is how the dock performs. Like we would expect, there is going to be a slight amount of loss in performance, but to aid against this, the BlacX 5G comes with full USB3.0 functionality and with performance levels being virtually the same, we can safely say that the dock does not impede the drives performance at all. I will point out though, that whilst this is the case for mechanical drives, don’t expect this to be the case with all SSDs and some of the higher performing drives will suffer some speed loss when docked in here.
Hitting the shelves at a mere £22, the value is all part of a cracking deal and as I’ve said, for something that does exactly as it says on the tin, it’s surely worth a bang for buck award.
it’s a POS. It randomly hibernates during a file transfer or doesn’t work at all in 2 of my PCs. The f/w upgrade program that I manged to get for this POS doesn’t work either…………meaning the program to upgrade the f/w doesn’t work. For the 3rd time, contacting Thrmaltake, all their RMA links don’t work either, both in FF & in IE. Contacting them a 4th time about this, resulted in them not even acknowledging my email, so I’m going to see how far I can throw this POS from my roof!