External Design

At the heart of the X-Navigator's visual design are the interchangeable bezel "masks", which come in 6 different colors: black, silver, blue, green, yellow, and red. Each case comes with a total of 3 different colors, the combinations of which can be found on Aspire's website.




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Click to enlarge.


The top half of the bezel features a door that swings open to the left, and when opened, it reveals the four 5-1/4" drive bays, the two exposed 3-1/2" drive bays as well as the power and reset buttons. The power button is large at about 3/4" while the reset button is extremely small, about 1/4". For large fingers, a toothpick may be required to reset the system.



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The door itself has a key lock, which seems like an excellent feature. When we took a look at the locking mechanism on the backside, though, we noticed it was made of plastic, which could easily be broken with some force. Using metal would have definitely improved this design.




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When the system is powered on, the corners of the front bezel light up with a bright blue color by four blue LEDs behind the semi-clear plastic moldings. They are extremely bright and do seem to get annoying if the case is on a table at eye level. The HDD activity light is at about mid-height towards the right side. When the door is opened, the HDD activity LED is aligned vertically with the power and reset buttons.




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Index External Design (cont'd)
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  • Locut0s - Tuesday, October 26, 2004 - link

    Perhaps the second paragraph on the first page should be italicized. It's not obvious at first that it's clipped from the company line. For a second it seemed like the article was being written by Aspire.
  • Locut0s - Tuesday, October 26, 2004 - link

  • SKiller - Tuesday, October 26, 2004 - link

    There seems to be a picture missing on page 2.

    Great looking case. Would be perfect if it had:
    A. Tool-less design (for drives & expansion cards.
    B. Quiter fans (and have the front intake be 120mm).
    C. A more elaborate side panel. Something with an unusual shaped window and maybe etched, UV sensetive design/picture.
    D. Maybe a 'No PS' option for about $120.

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