The Sentry LXE leaves me with mixed emotions, as there’s a lot to like about this product, but it comes with its fair share of niggles and limitations.




There’s no doubt that the Sentry LXE is a breakaway product from the established design ideals in the fan controller market. For this, I can give NZXT nothing but credit – they have brought a totally new product to market and they’ve done it in style. The Sentry LXE is, by some way, the best and most dramatic looking fan controller I’ve ever used or even seen. It controls the fan speeds well, monitors temperatures just fine and is equipped with even more functions besides, such as temperature alarms and time/date display.

It is, however, not without fault. The first one to discover is the frustrating installation, with just too many cables and mandatory extensions to keep track of and route without wanting to tear your hair out. Luckily, most will only ever have to do this once or twice. Secondly, the execution of control and user input could be better. Some touch buttons are frustratingly small and not particularly responsive until you have the knack, changing RPM moves from being a simple twist of a dial on a traditional controller to a long and tedious drawn out exercise, especially with many fans to change. Then there’s the price; £50 puts this in the very highest price bracket and pretty much a class of its own, as well as being roughly twice the price of some of the most popular controllers on the market now. Other problems such as the lack of PWM support and loss of one expansion slot may be deal breakers for some users too.

The Sentry LXE is aimed towards the high end user; everything about the product reflects that – price, quality and design included. It looks sleek and sophisticated paired with any high end gaming system, and if you can ignore the various flaws where it falls slightly short, this may well be the best finishing piece to add to your new high end rig.



For these reasons, I think the NZXT Sentry is worthy of a Vortez Silver award.