Kingwin has put a lot of effort into making the Jet look good and function well. The enclosure is well built and even uses 2 thumb screws for easy access to the hard drive.

     Kingwin Jet JT-35EU-BK has great compatibility as if features both eSATA and USB 2.0 interfaces. The USB interface allows the Jet to work with just about any computer with a USB port and Windows SE or higher. The eSATA on the other hand is new. eSATA is simply an external Serial ATA port that is hot swappable and extremely fast. In fact, eSATA is going to achieve speeds that are very close to the actual speed rating of the hard drive, unlike USB which is very slow in comparison.

     One feature I have mixed feelings about is the push button backup. I like the backup feature, but I don't like how the button is on the back of the enclosure as seen in the picture above.

     Here we see the front of the drive. The silver button is the power button. The button also glows blue when the power is on.

     The Kingwin Jet is one of the few external enclosures with a cooling fan, but this is the first one I've seen with GOOD cooling. Kingwin uses a large 80mm slim fan that is positioned directly under the hard drive.

     Here's another view of the cooling fan. Notice the port to help direct the air out the back of the enclosure. Kingwin never fails to impress me...

     Installing the hard drive into the Jet is fairly straightforward, however there is one issue that the consumer needs to be aware of when installing the hard drive. When installing a hard drive, the outer case of the drive may come in contact with the PCB in the front end of the enclosure. You must be aware of this and make sure the hard drive is positioned and tightened down so that is has clearance between the hard drive and PCB. Kingwin is aware of this issue and will be adding a warning sticker to the packaging on all future shipments.

Testing:

     In order to show just how fast eSATA is compared to USB 2.0, we'll test both the USB 2.0 and eSATA ports with Hard Drive Tach. The hard drive used in testing is a 120Gb Seagate 7200.9, SATA 3.0Gb/s hard drive.

USB Speed Test

eSATA Speed Test

     As you can clearly see, there really is no comparison between USB and eSATA. Sure, USB is handy because it's found on pretty much every computer made these days. However, eSATA is much faster and is starting to show up on new computers. You can even pick up an eSATA upgrade card if you computer didn't come with eSATA.

Backup Software:

     Kingwin is using a program called PC Clone EX Lite. It's a simple and easy to use backup program that only works with the USB port on the external device. Sorry, this version of PC Clone does not work with eSATA devices. However, I have spoken with Kingwin about this personally and they are working on a patch so that eSATA devices can be used with PC Clone.

PC Cone EX Lite backup menu.

Pressing the backup button on the back of the Jet activates PC Clone.

Conclusion:

     Once again, Kingwin has another great product that really stands out from the crowd. The Jet is a well built enclosure and I love the speed of eSATA. I really had to look hard to find anything negative about the Jet, but unfortunately I did find a couple issues that you should be aware of. The main issue I discovered is the possible contact between the hard drive and the PCB in the front of the Jet. The user just needs to be aware of the position of the hard drive when mounting it in the enclosure. If aware of this issue, it can be easily avoided. The second issue is the lack of eSATA support with PC Clone. But like I said earlier, Kingwin is working on a patch to enable eSATA support. Looking past the 2 small issues, I feel that the Jet is still a good, quality product that is well worth the price.