A Closer Look

The paint job if the AllInOne is simply said - perfect. It is thick, glossy and of very high quality. The top has a few air vents, but the unit does not heat up at all and the bottom is completely clean as well.


The device is secured using normal screws. There are three pairs of holes on either side, so it should fit perfectly inside your case, no matter what you are using.


The front is divided into two parts. The connections are placed toward the left, while the LCD and fan control is located on the right side of the front. The connections are protected by a drop down door. While the plastic is of high quality, the door hinges are made of the same material as well. It will break off quite easy if you were to bump into it while it is open.

The card reader is placed above the connectors. It can handle all major card formats, so you will not need anything else. The only format missing would be SDHC. The USB 2.0 and FireWire ports can be seen in the bottom right corner. The audio connectors and the video plug are placed right above the SATA connectors.

The LCD display is rather small, but should suffice for the intended use. There are four menu buttons under it. "Plus", "minus" to control the fan speed and "reset" and "mode" inbetween these.


The back holds three further cables and all the connectors can be seen. I took off the top cover to expose the PCBs inside the AllInOne. Turns out, that it is quite packed inside the compact unit. The three cables are already attached to the unreachable connectors of the device, so there is no reason for you to take off the top as I did.


Two of the three cables are meant for the thermal diodes, while the other is used by the card reader and connects to a USB 2.0 mainboard header.