NZXT Releases External Touch-Screen Fan Controller

IMOG, that's troubling though. For all we know, they cherrypicked a good one for you for the review. It's far too convenient to use the "old revision" excuse. Even if not, just the fact they knew they were sending one out for a reviewer breaks the firewall between reviewer and reviewee.

I'd rather see something reviewed that was purchased through standard supply chains, then reimbursed by the manufacturer, so that it's a better indicator of what's out there for the rest of us.

*edit* On the other hand, it's nice to get that level of interaction with the engineers. So I guess I'm mixed on it. */edit*

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We essentially went through the same technical support routine anyone else would go through - so it was also insight into how they deal with problems, and what they do to correct them. Looking around, the results we experienced with the FC-3 and FC-5 were consistent with what other people have observed.

Yet, your suggested arrangement would be ideal in some ways I think Paul - working with technical support/engineering would still be just as viable of an option whether we were reimbursed or provided the product first hand. That side of things is just as important a part of the overall picture as the product itself - Lamptron was excellent in their support and responsiveness, overall just being a pleasure to coordinate with (others have not been so excellent, and we don't have much to say about it, and further coordination is pursued less vigorously). The service and communication experience fit well with their fan controllers, offering a whopping 30W per channel if memory serves me right which compares very favorably to a lot of other options. They want to engineer things right, they want to provide good service, and they want to give people products they are happy with - everything adds up without making you stop and wonder "are these guys up to something?"

Its been my experience however that in this industry margins are commonly very low, and along with that so are the budgets - most contacts we've worked with readily promote the availability of product samples when something is new, however when they are gone they are gone. Its not an unlimited supply, and its not a flexible sort of thing where they just grab more if they need to give more away - there is an amount that is selected up front for review samples and that is what is budgeted for marketing reasons. I'm not sure how reimbursement would work out, or if many manufacturers are prepared to handle things in such a structure - if they are, they certainly don't advertise the option when working with them. I know some sites address this by just going to buy things on their own, because they have the advertising infrastructure and budget to support it.

In the end, our reviewers are part of this community like everyone else - it would be hard for a manufacturer to send us cherry units and get away with it. If we don't have any problems with our equipment, but people in the community are reporting problems left and right - we're going to catch wind of it and talk about what is going on. More than that even, binning hardware or special engineering premium samples are both very shady and cost/time intensive processes. I won't say it doesn't happen at all - Manufacturers are actively doing this for live competitions and at hwbot.org (for top benchmarkers), but for every day reviews where a dozen samples are set aside to be given away to review sites... It just isn't a relevant concern for your average hardware review sample.

EDIT: Thanks for the product insight Johnny, nice you of you to stop by.

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