LANCOOL 215 Review – EPIC Airflow but there’s a Catch…

Good people i'm dmitry and behind me is a 69 dollar landcool 215. it's really not hard to imagine what a budget enclosure should look like in 2020 and i feel like the 215 sets a good standard on what other companies should strive towards in terms of airflow not so much in feature set because this is very basic but i feel like lanco's priority here was airflow and they certainly delivered you can see the temperatures here are

Absolutely under control and for a 69 dollar enclosure this is impressive of course the front panel is a slight barrier to airflow because the front fans are not high static pressure and they only move at maximum 800 rpm the reason why i'm showing you the temperatures right away is because lee and lee had to cut some corners in order to hit that price point and to hit this performance level so i want to focus the rest of my review on talking about

What's not so perfect about the 215 and perhaps maybe you should look elsewhere just when you thought ssds are getting boring check out this new team group cardea ceramic pcie gen 4×4 ssd in one and two terabyte capacities with insanely fast read write speeds but also with that unique ceramic plate for heat dissipation check it out below all right so first let's align our expectations because this is a budget enclosure 69 is not anything super premium and it does separate itself very well

From the lanco 2 mesh you can check out our full review to get acquainted with the mesh enclosure which is fantastic but here the build quality isn't anything special so the front panel for example is plastic aside from the metal mesh uh and right next to the glass side panel it doesn't look very premium let's be honest though the front mesh looks exactly what uh cooler master had delivered with the h500 series so you know they're taking inspiration

Here you can even see the reinforcement on the center which is exactly what cooler master did too on the positive side however the metal mesh is fairly strong it doesn't bend even with a strong finger poke and it also acts as a dust filter therefore eliminating the need to add another layer for the airflow barrier the bling is appreciated as the two two hundred millimeter fans are argb and they connect to their own hub at the back and we also have the liam lee logo at the bottom that is also illuminated as part of this whole system so you can

Cycle between the different colors uh via the led button in the top io for 69 bucks it is appreciated and what surprised me the most is that each fan has the argb pin so you can connect them directly into your motherboard if you want to bypass the hub which by the way you can also plug into your motherboard and have that control uh through software the hub can also support six three pin fans which is great if you want to run everything off the hub which is powered by sata the top dust filter is magnetic

Pretty standard stuff and here you can do up to a 280 mm radiator with duo 140 and 120 fans one really positive thing about this enclosure is that size wise it's not anything bigger than the dx-500 or the new corsair 4000 series yet it looks like we have additional spacing above the motherboard for a radiator and set of fans so you're not going to be overlapping too much and memory clearance should not be a concern with the 215. and so overall if you remove the large fans at the front you can do a 360 radiator up there at

280 at the top which is pretty decent for a 69 enclosure and you have full seven centimeters and the power supply shroud clearance for radiator and set of fans and plus because you can install the fans outside of the frame at the front that means you can do push-pull easy by the way you will notice the difference between retail fans as they will have a much smaller sticker and the front panel on my sample was really difficult to remove

But that will be changed because the tooling has been modified for easier removal the io at the top is properly spaced out between the ports although the audio jack is really far away and also this being in the corner it's kind of inconvenient also the tempered glass side panel somehow is inconvenient because there are no latches on the side panel at the rear so when you remove the thumb screws you don't have anything to pull the side panel with so you're gonna have a lot of fingerprints to clean

As you try to remove the side panel backwards moving inside this is a really basic interior but atx and eatx motherboards are supported which is great the entire power supply shroud is perforated and we have this massive dust filter that is removable from the back and it spends the entire floor a few things to notice here is that we have no vertical pci slots the dual ssd caddies behind the motherboard tray do not have the captive thumb screws which i find really odd and they cannot be relocated on top of the power supply

Shroud which is something that you can do with most cases but not with the 21.5 and there's a single hard drive gauge in the bottom chamber but without a drive caddy so if you do insert a three and a half inch drive there you have to use screws on the side so as you can see the case is budget oriented and the experience is pretty bare bones especially when it comes to cable management it's a good thing that we have the hub included so you don't have to run the fans into your motherboard but the

Velcro straps are super basic and i find the lack of cable type points around the enclosure especially at the bottom a little bit of a downside because i mean i could have done a better cable management job but only if the case allows me to do so for example my latest experience with the corsair 4000 series that cable management system for 79 is far superior to what you find with 215. but here of course the priority has been given to airflow with the two fans here and the one exhaust 120mm fan

So finally here's what the system looks like assembled i really appreciate the extra height above the motherboard so if you are installing any radiators there you have plenty of room and for the 69 price point this is the best airflow enclosure in its class despite the front panel not looking very pretty but this is a clear example of product segmentation because the lanco 215 and its own budget class that doesn't touch the feature standpoint that you find on the lanco 2 mesh

Which is a 99 case i feel like leon lee is starting to become a bit more aggressive in its pricing strategy and a bit like phanteks of releasing uh proper enclosures in their price categories without overstepping on the toes of their own products that's a really good strategy to top charts when it comes to temperatures but like i said my experience in terms of building and handling the enclosure it doesn't feel very good it feels like a cheap enclosure

And that's exactly what you get all right guys i'm dimitri thanks much for watching check out this other relevant content subscribe for more i'll talk to you in the next video