Kingwin Nighthawk TL-35CS External Enclosure

Access to the internal drive area is made by removing two thumb screws which allow the top section to fold up and off.  Opening and closing the unit comes unfortunately with moderate difficulty.  While the feel is far from a 'forcing it' type of thing, it isn't a smooth pulling the cover off or putting it back in place either.

  

Here is the inside view where the white strips you see on the top and bottom are cushions.  These cushions do just that for any installed drive, keeping it snug and making the unit more shock resistant.  The internal 40mm cooling fan has an aluminum shroud over it with half being open to the drive bay area and the other half pulling air off the PCB of the controller for the power and interface.  I would have liked to see a larger fan here but then again, the unit operates so that it can barely be heard from a foot away and a larger fan very well would change that.

  

Under power

With everything hooked up and running we can see the blue indicator lights.  On the right side of the unit as you can see below is the drive's activity lamp while on the left side is the power and fan lamp.  The blue power light comes on with the unit being powered as well as the fan indicator.  Should the fan fail for whatever reason, the fan lamp changes color from blue to red.  The color shift is observable but not in your face as a fan failure indicator should be.  A soft audio alarm would have been a nice addition.

Performance

Connecting the unit up to my primary machine (laptop), we fired up SiSoft Sandra 2005's File System Benchmark.  We made several runs to ensure our results were all in the same area.  Below is a screen shot of that program's benchmark results which were very pleasing. 

Conclusion

The Nighthawk is a new variation on a not so new theme.  The Kingwin Nighthawk shows that many companies, Kingwin in this instance, take time to polish and hone products over time.  Adding a SATA connection for the hardware IT person is a huge plus, setting the Nighthawk on a much higher footing than the competition.  The sleek looks of the Nighthawk are welcome along with the very solid feel of the unit and shock dampening pads in the interior drive area.  Again, something many competing product do not have.  Access to the drive area is via two thumb screws for speed and simplicity which unfortunately looses the ground it gained with the sticking cover plate.  The only other point of concern was that of the fan failure lamp.  While an external drive rack isn't going to exactly be a mission critical device, having a more overt warning than the visual only red LED on the bezel would have been a nice step.

All in all, the Kingwin Nighthawk's features are their own draw and speak for themselves.  This is a product if you have the need for transporting large blocks of data, you would not regret and one that we can fully recommend.

Pros

• Superior performance

• Snazzy design

• Quiet operation

• Cushioned drive area to make unit shock resistant

• Tool-less

• Lightweight

• Inexpensive

• SATA compatibility

Cons

• Sticking top cover

• Fan failure indicator a bit subtle

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