The Bottom Line

Inateck is a relatively new brand that has entered the market delivering storage solutions among others to budget-minded consumers. While these solutions don't have all the glitz and glamor of some higher priced solutions, I have found, with my admittedly limited experience with their products, solid functionality.
The latest solution from Inateck comes in the form of a new 2.5" drive enclosure. Carrying the model number FE2008C, this solution offers an aluminum enclosure with internal SATA connection. On the outside, they have kept things simple with a blue LED and Type C connection. Now this Type C connection still aligns to the SuperSpeed 5Gbps spec and not the latest 10Gbps we have been waiting for. This enclosure is capable of housing both 7mm and 9mm drives, either SSD or HDD and for those using 7mm drives they have included a foam pad.
As this solution is a Type C device, you will need a Type C port on your PC or Mac. Outside of that it is compatible with modern Windows and OS X 10.6+. MSRP of the Inateck FE2008C comes in at $34.99 with a one-year warranty.

Starting off the images we have for this solution, the Inateck FE2008C arrived to me in a somewhat plain brown box. The front has a white label that contains features about the enclosure.

Scope of delivery is quite slim but includes everything needed to get you setup. On the left we have the user manual then the enclosure and Type C cable.

On the edge of the enclosure, you can see the Type C port and LED to the far right.

Above, we have installed our Intel 730 Series SSD.

After opening up the unit to expose the PCB, we found Inateck was using the ASMedia 1153e USB 3.0 to SATA bridge along with the ASM1542 10Gbps signal switch.

Testing the FE2008C, I installed our 480GB Intel 730 SSD. Running this solution through Anvils, I was able to reach 413 MB/s read and 404 MB/s write, while random performance touched 30K IOPS read and write.
The Inateck FE2008C isn't a high dollar storage enclosure with all the bells and whistles. In fact, it's the complete opposite as the FE2008C was built to a hit a price point and it appears they have been rather successful at it. While this solution isn't of the highest quality, it does give you an aluminum enclosure for durability with plastics to surround the drive. Internally, we have top end components from ASMedia, and while they did cut corners with the USB 3.0 to SATA bridge chip, it's not a major factor.
On the flip side, there was only a single issue I did have with this enclosure, and that was with a 7mm drive installed using the included foam pad. I still received a bit of a rattle when moving the enclosure around. To me, that can be easily fixed with a thicker rubber or closed cell foam pad, and I certainly hope they do fix it.
As far as performance was concerned, we didn't quite peak the performance of our Intel 730 SSD in testing but I was able to reach 413 MB/s read and 404 MB/s write. I found this to be quite acceptable for this enclosure as it's not far behind many high dollar solutions. Overall, I am quite happy with the build quality minus the rattles along with the performance, and with an MSRP sitting around $34.99, you really can't go wrong for a Type C storage enclosure.
Tyler's Test System Specifications
- Motherboard: ASUS Z97-A - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
- CPU: Intel Core i7 4770K - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
- Cooler: Corsair H100i GTX - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
- Memory: Patriot Viper 3 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3 1600 - Buy from Amazon
- Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
- Storage: Intel 730 480GB - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
- Case: Corsair Obsidian 750D - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
- Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower 750W - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
- OS: Microsoft Windows 10 - Buy from Amazon