I'm very impressed with this case. I've admittedly never used or owned a raspberry pi before recently, so I was worried about a few things -- I've heard they can overheat under stress pretty easily, I wasn't sure how hard it'd be to assemble something that has a good look and feel from the bare-bones circuit board that's usually displayed, and I hoped I wouldn't be forced to get a case with a fan as I wanted something that was as compact and quite as possible and could be ported around easily. This seemed like the best way to solve all of those concerns and I wasn't disappointed.
For ease of assembly, it has four screws that go in the bottom, and a small thermal pad that goes on the CPU and makes contact with the case. All you have to do is stick that on, put the board in the case (this took a little fiddling for me but it won't go in wrong so that's good), and screw the bottom on. It's then set up, and definitely portable as the whole setup is only about the size of two decks of cards stacked on top of each other.
The cooling really stood out. I turned the pi on running raspbian and did some general average-work-load tests, keeping the CPU at about 50% capacity and checking the temperature every so often. It tended to stay around 55 C and would NOT exceed 60 C. Once that went well, I decided to put the unit under some stress by running a benchmark, a python script doing some calculations, and having several browser tabs open. I ran a temperature monitor while doing this, kept the CPU usage mostly in the 90s for ten minutes, and the temperature never exceeded 67 C. In fact, it stayed around 60 C for most of this experiment. For reference, note that the pi doesn't throttle at all until 80. I thought that perhaps my unit wasn't reporting the temperature correctly for some reason but as my results seem to line up with other reviews on here, I'll take them to be accurate. The case does get uncomfortably warm to the touch during this process if that's of concern, but I don't believe it's hot enough to cause a burn or otherwise be a hazard.
Since I know some aluminum cases cause wifi issues, I figure it's worth mentioning that I had no trouble connecting this to the internet or bluetooth. I was able to do both, operate the pi using a bluetooth mouse and keyboard with no problems, and measure internet speeds similar to those on my laptop using speedtest.net.
As for drawbacks, the only one I could think of is that this case doesn't allow open access to the GPIO pins or any other portion of the board, and must be disassembled if you wish to make changes to any setups involving these. If you're just running raspbian, using this as a media center/retro console, or doing something else that doesn't actually require this access then that won't be a big deal, but I thought it was worth a mention.
In summary, if you're getting a raspberry pi 4, are on the fence about what case to get or how to cool it, and you don't care about being able to access the GPIO pins on a regular basis, then this case won't disappoint you. It does everything you'd expect a good cooling case to do, is easy to assemble, and feels durable enough I frankly don't see myself ever having to replace it. Will likely buy again if I ever get a second pi 4 for any reason.
| Brand | Flirc |
|---|---|
| Item Weight | 5 ounces |
| Product Dimensions | 3.6 x 2.6 x 1.1 inches |
| Item Dimensions LxWxH | 3.6 x 2.6 x 1.1 inches |
| Color | Kodi |
| Manufacturer | Flirc |
| ASIN | B07WG4DZR6 |
| Country of Origin | China |
| Is Discontinued By Manufacturer | No |
| Date First Available | June 22, 2017 |
