Joined on 04/04/07
Full USB Ahead! Hub Detected Port-side!
Pros: Yarr! This be a mighty fine hub. Many a swashbucklin' be had utilizing the 7 ports for keyboard, mouse, and storage devices of all kind! A real treasure this be --fit for the likes of ye while battling a foe or two on the high seas. Ye'd be hard-pressed to find such a fine vessel in all the world that can boast a full 7 ports at USB 3.0 speeds! With nary even a hint of lag or sacrifice in the quality of the unit, the price point be ripe for the takin'! No need to be plunderin' this lot! Up to 5Gbps in data transfer speeds (2,028kts for ye sea worthy), means ye'd be crazier than a pirate swimming in rum to pass this up! It be pleasant on the eyes too!
Cons: I curse the vile beast that decided the 12v power supply jack be on the starboard side of the vessel! The data connection be aft as ye'd expect, but the soulless monster who decided to place the power port on the side should be meetin' the likes of Davey Jones!
Overall Review: Nothing wrong with this here unit. Should make a great addition for any of ye commoners lookin' to be addin' some added connectivity to yer ship!
ESR1200
Pros: The ESR1200 is a fancy little router. There are quite a few PROs on this router which I will attempt to quantify here. Design: It has no external antenna and can be mounted to a wall or ceiling easily with the help of a few screws and the keyhole slots on the base. As indicated, there are 4 Gigabit LAN ports and the WAN. There is also the USB port (we'll get to that). Ethernet: The gigabit ethernet ports work as well as one would expect. I did test the ports briefly, but my main focus was on the wireless connectivity and how the newer 5GHz band would fare in my setup. If you are going to be utilizing hardline connections, you will appreciate the gigabit ports on this unit. Wireless: The router comes with two radios, a 2.4GHz radio which handles the 802.11a/g/n protocols and a 5.0GHz radio which can handle 802.11n/ac. It was really nice to hook up my 2010 MacBooks, iPad 2s, Android Phone to the 5GHz connection for the sheer speed was quite fantastic on the local network with file sharing and such. Using the connection to perform RDP/VNC across wifi was smooth and super responsive. In the past I would have had to use ethernet to get this type of responsiveness with full experience settings enabled. I was able to transfer large amounts of files between my MacBook and my PC Desktop without the need for wiring up either machine and while it definitely would have been faster to use the gigabit connections on the router itself, it would have prohibited me from testing other aspects of the router. Range: The range on both bands is somewhat average to decent. I placed the router in the basement as this is where the cable modem is. I live in a 2 story home and was easily able to connect at the furthest points within my 2k sqft home. If your space is larger, you may run into speed issues, but I did not notice any degradation in speed or connectivity with regard to distance. Guest Network: Each band can be set up with multiple SSIDs to broadcast and if used, the user can then designate a "spare" SSID on either radio as a guest network. This is handy if you have friends coming to your home/place of business, you can enable the guest network and not need to grant them any form of security key. The network is on a separate subnet so there is not any LAN access to your secured network. Also, if you need to quickly kill the connection you can. USB: Having the ability to plug an external HDD into your router and then instantly have access to the device via LAN and the Internet is fantastic. While the interface seemed somewhat rudimentary, I was quickly able to upload/download files to the connected drive. DDNS Support: The EnGenius supports and even provides a DDNS (Dynamic DNS) service. You are able to punch in a custom host name in the settings and then access the device from the internet or LAN. I find this very useful because it is one less thing I have to worry about managing yet I still have access to the USB storage vi
Cons: Wireless: While the 2.4GHz band has not caused any issues, the 5GHz band seemed to have some rather annoying drops in coverage. I'm not sure if the 5GHz radio in my unit is defective, but occasionally (more than once per day or even once every few hours) the connection on 5GHz would become stagnant and then completely unresponsive. Switching all devices to remain on the 2.4GHz band solved this issue, but the point of having the dual band router would be to connect with the best available radio and then utilizing the secondary radio if necessary. The other odd issue that I came across (not sure if this my own lack of knowledge in the area or not) was the fact that when using a wireless connection to hook up my Samsung 320 series laser printer, I was unable to resolve the wireless connection from my MacBook (5GHz ) to the printer (2.4GHz). Utilizing the basic setup it would have seemed that both radios should have been able to negotiate being on a single subnet and provide a proper connection to the printer. Once I switched the MacBook to the 2.4GHz radio, it was no longer an issue. DLNA: I enabled the EnShare technology based on the documentation, but was unable to actually serve up video content via the DLNA server. I was utilizing VLC Media player which I'd done before. The player would find the DLNA server on the router via UPnP but I was unable to browse the directory structure nor was I able to actually find or serve up any of the video files on the USB drive unless I wanted to use the NAS interface to just straight up download the files which seemed unacceptable as a streaming video solution. The packaging for the EnGenius ESR1200 makes it appear as though you are receiving a state-of-the-art DLNA multimedia server that you just need attach storage to and you're ready to go. In reality, the only "troubleshooting" I was able to do was to check in the admin page that yes, I had in fact checked the radio button for "enable" on the DLNA server page. There aren't many other settings in this regard.
Overall Review: When first receiving the router from Newegg for the purposes of this review, I had to admit that I had never heard of the EnGenius brand. The device seems well constructed for what it is --an average router with tons of features that work mediocrely. There were a few features I was just plain unable to test such as the integrated VPN and IP Camera functionality. When the features work, they work really well, however the connectivity issues that I experienced with the 5GHz band really brought this router down a peg in my expectations. I was really hoping that it would have delivered on everything that it seemed to contain. This coupled with the DLNA issues really served to reduce my score on this device from a 4 to a 3 egg review. Had either of these been better, I probably would have gone 4 or 5 eggs. If utilizing this router for simple networking with the ability to add a usb hard drive or flash drive to share over the network, it's fantastic --even the ability to access via the internet adds a little bit extra (though this could be configured without being built into the router). Enabling things like DMZ (for my PS3) seemed to work as expected and were easy to set up. Port forwarding for RDP via the built in DDNS seemed to work alright and as previously mentioned was nice to not have to connect everything via Ethernet. Overall, if I were going to purchase this type of device, I probably would have opted for something a little less expensive that was a little more solid, even if not packed with as many features. Let's face it, features are only great if they work all the time.
Fantastic Little Powerhouse
Pros: The SF850L is a great little power supply that doesn't skimp on performance. If you're looking to build out a small form factor ATX-based machine, you would do well to look at this unit. The build quality is fantastic and feels really solid. The parts all seem well-made and the unit has that feel to it that you know it's going to just do its job right from the start. It is super quiet and works really well under load. I don't have a noise meter to compare to my RM850i, but anecdotally it sounds quieter --even while gaming. I was able to swap the unit out, plug in the cables, and off I went without any issues. When I am ready to build my next rig for gaming, this will likely be the power supply that I use to reduce the size of my build. It's really nice that the unit comes with a full size ATX adapter plate too so that you can mount it into larger ATX cases. The plate lines up perfectly and the included screws allow you to secure it well.
Cons: None of the issues I have with this unit are enough to detract any egg from my review as I knew going in that I would be testing a PSU marketed at a smaller form factor based build. That said, in my Antec 1200 I was not able to route the CPU/Motherboard cables properly to actually mount the PSU into the chassis on my case. If you are considering this for a larger case, you will likely want to just go with a full sized ATX power supply. One really minor and nitpicky thing that surprised me was that there was no reusable bag for the cables. With prior Corsair models that I've used in the past (AX750, RM850i, etc.) there have always been a nice zippered pouch to put the extra cables in.
Overall Review: If you're looking to keep your build on the small side but still require a decent amount of clean, quiet power, this unit will serve you well. It's a great addition to any rig and should be enough to power all but the most demanding builds with current hardware.
Super quick, great capacity!
Pros: This drive is lightning fast! In my rig, which is rapidly aging, I was able to hit sustained write speeds of over 400MBps on large files while maintaining 2000ish MBps on sustained reads. The drive has tons of capacity for all of my gaming and media needs and I've definitely noticed improved load times on games when running off of this drive. For the price of the drive, I'm definitely considering adding a second to my rig and would urge others to do so. Crucial makes fantastic quality items and this is no exception.
Cons: The included securing screw did not fit my post on my motherboard and I had to use a different one from a mixed pack I ordered from another retailer. Not the end of the world as I always like to keep extra hardware on hand. Definitely not enough of a problem to cause it to lose an egg.
Overall Review: Overall, I'm very satisfied with this drive and will continue to support Crucial in the future!
Lightning Quick! Great for PS5!!
Pros: Sturdy, well-built, and overall a nice high-quality piece of hardware. The amount of storage on the unit is crazy for its size. Read and write speeds are crazy fast (see below) and the heatsink makes sure that this SSD stays nice and cool. Installation/formatting the drive in the PS5 took literally under 5 minutes from start to finish.
Cons: I haven't really noticed any cons yet. I guess if you wanted to pick something, you could argue price though to be fair it's really not that expensive for what it is (which is a great piece of hardware). I don't really have any cons. It comes in electro-static foam, but other than that there is no protection for the circuitry when you take the SSD out of the package, so be careful.
Overall Review: Overall I'll definitely be recommending this product line to my fellow PS5 gaming friends that are looking to add an expansion SSD to their consoles. I tried moving some games around after it was installed and it was able to write over 26GB of data in UNDER 15 seconds. This absolutely blew my mind. Installation in the console was super quick and I've been really impressed with how games play off of it --though I am playing mostly PS4 titles off of this SSD but I have tried a certain web-slinging PS5 title and didn't notice any issues with load times or performance in the game. I have not noticed this unit getting hot either. The massive heatsink that covers the SSD does a really good job (even inside of the console) to ensure that it stays well within safe operating temperatures, though I didn't have a good way to really metric this exactly other than doing some touch tests as the console was running --it definitely never got above "warm". Corsair have continued to impress me with the quality of their products and this is no exception. As I said above, highly recommended for anyone looking to add storage to a PS5 or to use this internally in a PC build.
Functions as advertised!
Pros: This product is fairly easy to set up and use as it is mostly plug and play. The upgraded version of the powerline technology is pretty fast and I haven't noticed any lag on my network while using these devices as wifi access points. I've found the speeds over wifi to be comparable to what I would get on a standalone wifi router and I could see this being the solution for someone in a moderately sized house where hard-wiring access points isn't desired or feasible. Overall they work well and do what they're made for, but some of the cons bring their score down for me.
Cons: The app is kind of hard to use. It seems like it was not developed as a native app for mobile devices but merely hosts a web view that does not render to fit the size of screen on my device (iPhone 13 Pro Max). You can not configure the radios to be dual-band with two separate SSIDs. This means that if your main 2.4GHz SSID differs from say your 5GHz, you can not mirror that setup on these access points. Also, the wifi settings for the adapters are global, not per adapter. I could not figure out how to have two separate configurations as it seems to be shared across all paired devices. I would have liked to have created a guest network on one and my private network on another. The fact that these are designed to completely occupy the outlet space (and the instructions even state to not use the second plug when using these), it's a little limiting as to where these can be placed. Sure, they have a pass-through for a single plug, but you're not supposed to use the second plug when these are installed. That makes things tricky in my case as I have tons of devices that require power and access to power is at a premium.
Overall Review: This product is NOT a wifi router and I feel like the product descriptions could do a better job of stating that these are merely access points that connect to an existing router on your network. Powerline technology has continued to improve and so long as you follow the directions, you should have no issues using these.