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Clearly the Icy Box MB973SP 2B FlexCage has not been designed for every system in the market. It has a very specific feature set and needs to be installed into a rig with an available header and an owner who has a stack of mechanical desktop drives that need to be hot-swapped back and forth.
That said, it has a solid and professional feel to it that gives you a feeling of confidence, remember this is data we're talking about – so that's a good plus point.
Installation into a decent tower case is fairly straightforward and, once installed, moving drives in and out is very easy.
Icy Box has tried to deliver a plug-n-play tray-less cage to the market at a sensible price. It has a replaceable 80mm cooling fan (in case you have a specific requirement in terms of noise or air flow) and there is an integrated 3-speed fan controller with smart technology.
In terms of usability, it also gives you a pair of USB 3.0 ports on the front, which will make up for losing any when you connect it to your mainboard.
Icy Box claims that the product is childproof, because there is a 2-stage process to opening a bay door. Not sure that Icy Bay has tested this with a lot of kids, but we give them marks for effort.
One small word of warning if you are interested in this unit: There is a similar version that is very old and, largely, discontinued. The key difference is that the out of date drive has an eSATA port on the front in place of one of the USB ports. If you want the latest version, then check for dual USB 3.0 on the front.
Another thing you need to do is consider carefully what software will be required for you to achieve the results you need. For example, Icy Box makes a strong mention of ‘RAID' in its download data sheet, but that word does not appear on the product description page. In fact the word software does not appear on that page either, so you will need to have your own back-up/duplication products.
Overall, we like this product and, at the time of writing, it seems to be available between £91 and £105.
Sure, the market is niche, but the 3-in-2 design is clever and we like the thought that's gone into the user's ability to trade-off cooling and noise.
Pros:
- Neat design – will suit most systems.
- Compact 3-in-2 solution.
- Plenty of cooling/noise control options.
- Giving up the mainboard headers doesn't mean you lose out on front-facing USB 3.0 ports.
Cons:
- Availability in the UK channel is sporadic.
- You must have the available mainboard header or this is a non-starter.
- Icy Box mentions ‘RAID' and ‘Back-Up', but no additional software is included.
KitGuru says: Definitely Worth Considering if you have plenty of old drives or regularly need to move huge chunks of data back and forth. Would be more rounded and with greater appeal if it also included software bundles.
