It is honestly rather hard to find anything tangibly wrong with the Phanteks Evolv Shift XT. The only real gripes revolve around unnecessarily restrictive airflow when in compact mode and the frustration you will most certainly feel when hitting the power button by mistake and irrevocably shutting down your system.

But besides that, there is so much that is great about the Shift XT, which starts with the price. At $169.99 MSRP, it is competitively priced to provide better price/performance than some other cases out there. While some are $10-20 cheaper, those don't give you nearly as many features as the Shift XT.

From an engineering perspective, the Phanteks Evolv Shift XT manages to impress from the very beginning. With the intricate way to disassemble the case with that focus of hiding away anything that could be noise to the overall design or the sliding mechanism to hide and uncover the IO and embedded ARGB controller, there is an attention to detail that immediately sets high expectations for the interior.

The interior of the Phanteks Evolv Shift XT does not disappoint, either. Yes, it is unmistakably bigger than other SFF enclosure out there, even in the "compact" configuration, but Phanteks has made that deliberate choice to really push a smooth and easy build experience that is unrivaled by other bare enclosures of this type out there today. Add the flexibility of the "air boost" and "liquid cooled" configurations and the Evolv Shift XT effortlessly transforms to cater to all three core market segments for SFF ITX enclosures—well done, Phanteks!