• Really slick case, but falling behind current laptop designs

  

  As reviewed by Will McCammon on 5/28/2010

  This is a really nicely built case with solid closures and good features. It has two removable covers (front and top), with all joints using metal dove-tail extrusion edges. Rather than use thick and heavy particle board for rigidity, this case relies on riveted metal extrusions and uses thin, but strong, exterior shell materials, which keeps the weight down (an important feature for me). Things that may not be obvious on first glance is the removable oval "logo" plates on the sides and rear access-door, which can be used for cable pass-throughs (they?re held one with two screws each), allowing for a tidy look at a gig. This particular model has 4 rack-units of space up front and around 7 on the angle up top. The sliding laptop table was the main feature that drove me to buy this. Odyssey must have changed it after some other online reviews/notes were written, as the table now has riveted "stops", to prevent it from sliding too far back and coming off. It?s quite solid and slides easily, even when loaded. I found myself using the sliding feature frequently, to peek at level meters on my mixer, pot up a mic, etc., then put the laptop back up close for ease of use. So nice to have. The only faults I have found with this case are some issues with positioning of the hole patterns in the angled rack-rails (not uncommon) and with the size of the laptop tray. The very front corner of the angled and vertical rack rails come together in very close proximity; too close to allow for rack-screws to coexist in the holes in both rails nearest the corner (at least on one side, on mine). This can be worked-around by shortening one screw with a Dremel, if you really need to rack up using that particular hole (which I did). The sliding-tray was probably designed with "standard? (15 or 16 inch screen) laptops in mind, a couple of years ago - with wider "widescreen" laptops becoming ubiquitous, the tray is doesn't leave much "workspace"; there's just enough room for a mouse, but fitting a midi-controller next to the lappy is difficult and is to the exclusion of a mouse ? you can?t fit both. The 19" rack-mount standard sizing limits what Odyssey could have done though. I worked-around this issue by adding a 1RU slide-out tray/table to the front rack. I've gigged twice with this case now and I'm very pleased with it. It's already protected my gear from one drop and the sliding tray is a boon for digital dj'ing.

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