Antec Sonata IV vs. Progress: Round Four

Conclusion: Time for a Change

Antec's venerable Sonata line feels largely unchanged from its first iteration. That's not entirely a bad thing: aesthetically the Sonata IV is easily one of the sleekest, most attractive enclosures we've tested, and the way the airflow is designed feels about as good as it's going to get without additional hardware and size. For a modest system, the Sonata IV's aesthetics and the included power supply make some sense.

The problem is that the Sonata IV seems to only begrudgingly advance forward. The routing system for the USB 3.0 feels tacked on, as does the extremely problematic mounting system for the SSD. And there's just no sign of any of the advances made over the past few years in enclosure design, many of which Antec helped pioneer. Antec's representative made it clear that the Sonata IV isn't really aimed at enthusiasts. Fair enough, and I can certainly see where they're coming from.

The problem is that a lot of the changes that have appeared in enthusiast cases as of late just make sense from a practical perspective. Intel's heatsink mounting system has sucked since LGA 775 first showed up, it continues to suck with LGA 1155/1156/1366 today, and will continue to suck for the foreseeable future (LGA 2011). Until someone over there wakes up and realizes how terrible the push-pin system is, case designers are going to have to account for it, and that means putting a cutout in the motherboard tray. Likewise, I appreciate Antec including a decent power supply with the Sonata IV, but there's nowhere for the cables to go except cramming them into the open 5.25" bays.

Finally, there's the price tag, and even their rep admitted the MSRP was a bit too high. The Sonata IV released at $169, and can be found at $159 today. Antec's working on getting it lower, and in the meantime the Sonata III will remain available as an alternative. You sacrifice the USB 3.0 connectivity and some video card clearance, but $130 shipped is a lot easier to swallow when you consider that it includes a 500W EarthWatts, 80 Plus Bronze certified power supply. The best price we can find on the Sonata IV is $149 shipped, so at first glance it seems like $19 more for an extra 120W on the PSU, but that's only part of the story; you need to look at what you're really paying for.

With the Sonata IV you're getting a $65 power supply included for "free," which leaves you paying $90 for the case itself--and there's currently a $20 mail-in rebate on the Neo Eco 620W PSU, so it's really a $45 power supply! The Sonata III on the other hand includes a similar case with a $60 power supply, leaving the case costing just $70. Simply put, the EarthWatts 500W is a better PSU than the Neo Eco 620W, which leaves the Sonata IV with too high a price tag for a case that just hasn't advanced with the competition. It's not bad, but it's not the improvement over the Sonata III that it should've been.