Introduction

With USB 3.0 quickly gaining acceptance in the mainstream, it's now time for consumers to take advantage of the performance it has to offer. USB 3.0 is literally 10 times faster than USB 2.0 and hundreds of thousands of motherboards have shipped with the new standard onboard with hundreds of millions coming over the next few years. Just like USB 2.0 before it, USB 3.0 will soon be the household universal communication standard.

Now that everyone is starting to get USB 3.0, we have to figure out what to do with it. So far the storage product market has been the only group to put forth a great effort in tackling this great mystery. Then again, it is the storage market that is positioned to make useful the large amount of bandwidth provided by USB 3.0.

Today we are looking at the MUKii TransImp External 3.5 HDD USB 3.0 Enclosure. Say it three times and you win a prize. The title alone pretty much tells the story; we have a USB 3.0 connected hard drive enclosure that can accept 3.5" form factor drives. Let's take a look at the specifications of the….well, you know.

Specifications, Pricing and Availability

The official name of the enclosure is TIP-330SU-BK and I actually like that better than carpal tunnel syndrome, so we will use it for today. As the name suggests, the enclosure is for SATA 3.5" hard drives and connects to your computer via USB 2.0 or USB 3.0. To get the most out of your drive you will want to use USB 3.0, but in some cases where only USB 2.0 is available you can use that as well. The enclosure is not self-powered, but it does come with a wall wart PSU to get things up and running.

After looking around the web I was able to find the TIP-330SU-BK available at MWave.com for 37.20 USD. At this time Newegg doesn't list any MUKii products, but that may change over time. After doing some searches online we found the lowest cost aluminum 3.5" form factor USB 3.0 enclosure to be right around 25 USD, so the TIP-330SU-BK is going to have to work really hard to win us over.