Vantec's NexStar-DX is an external case for 5.25" optical storage devices. It is a good solution IT professionals who need a portable ODD to carry from location to location or PC to PC.

The design is very good, the black aluminum finish is quite impressive and at the same time provides good heat dissipation, while the integrated fan, further helps keep the drive cool. The drive uses mains power and there is an on/off switch at the rear of the case. Unfortunately, the case only comes in black, so it would mostly suit a black coloured drive.

The retail package includes all that you need to get started, and installation is very easy, even for the average and inexperienced PC user.

On the performance side, we were disappointed to say the least. The device could not climb above a speed of 5.67x when we tested it with Nero CD-DVD Speed. We tested it on two different PC systems, both with USB 2.0 support and based on the nForce4 & nForce 590 chipsets, respectively. We cannot imagine that the problem lies with Nvidia's chipsets, since we also tried another enclosure which uses the same chipset from Cypress Semiconductor, which is used in Vantec's enclosure, and were able to reach 12X speed. This is a major drawback and one that leads us to discourage users from buying this device until this problem is fixed.