Antec Sonata Plus 550 Case Review

Conclusions

This is definitely a high-end case using top-notch finishing and features. In fact it has features that we’ve only seen before on bigger cases. Its size, by the way, is very much appreciated. Even though gamers don’t seem to mind owning big cases (especially when they want to impress their friends), usually average users and eventual gamers prefer cases that won’t take up a lot of their working space.

Noise was the main concern of Antec when developing this case, as it has a plastic layer attached to the side panels and a suspension mechanism for the hard disk drives in order to reduce the noise produced by the PC.

So even though this case may look small and not aggressive-looking to users used to big cases, don’t be fooled by its looks. It is indeed a high-end case with top-notch manufacturing quality.

Its black automotive painting is flawless and this is a heavy case (26 Lbs or 12 Kg). Just to put things into perspective, Sonata III 500 from Antec has the exact same size but weights 20 lbs (9 Kg).

Another thing that makes this case great is its power supply: it comes already with an Antec Neo HE 550 installed, which is a very good power supply that we personally recommend.

We could only find three negative points on this case. First is pricing. Costing around USD 180 it is definitely not an option to all users, but when you think that it comes already with a power supply that alone costs between USD 100-120 then you can see that this product is not as expensive as it seems, especially because we are talking about a high-end product here.

Second, we don’t like the
fact that the motherboard tray is permanently attached to the case. A removable tray makes the motherboard and smaller components like CPU and memories easier to install. On the other hand this setup prevents noise: on cases where the tray can be unscrewed from the chassis the tray isn’t always perfectly fastened to the chassis, being a little bit loose, what generates noise.

And the third negative point in our opinion is the absence of an eSATA port on the frontal panel, especially on a case from this price range.

But we think that if you are looking for a high-quality case already coming with a very good power supply and fancy features – especially the way hard disk drives and optical drives are installed – and have USD 180 to spend you will love this case. It is by far one of the best cases we’ve seen to date, providing a good cost/benefit ratio to users that are looking for a true high-end case.