Bitfenix Shinobi XL XL-ATX Gaming Case Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
2,327 words · ~11 min read
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Welcome to my unboxing of the Shinobi
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with a twist. This is the Shinobi XL,
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which stands for extra large. Actually,
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I don't know that it does. It might stand for XLATX because while that does
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mean that the case is probably extra large, uh Whoa, it's really big. Huh.
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Okay. And that's what Yeah,
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I said. Wait, no. Okay, backing it up.
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Um, XLATX is a longer than longer than standard
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form factor. So, that is to say that it is, uh, you know, about 2 in longer than
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you're probably used to and sometimes wider. Here we have a manual. And let's
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go ahead and, you know what? Let's look at the box before we open this up. Here
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we go. Soft touch surface treatment. We're used to seeing that on Bit Phoenix
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cases. It feels nice, looks nice. Four super speed USB 3.0 ports, including or
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in addition to, we'll figure that out later. Their supercharge port, which is
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cool. Delivers up to 2.5 amps of power on the front USB, which means you can
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charge anything you want quickly. Tool-free design. A flex cage hard disk
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rack, which means you can go this way, that way, or remove the whole thing
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entirely. XLATX compatibility and superior water cooling support. So, this
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case supports up to two triple 120 or
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360 mm as the kids call them today
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radiators natively. I am glad to see a
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manufacturer taking or actually a lot of manufacturers these days taking water
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cooling so seriously because while it's all fine and good to be able to put one
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360 mm radiator, water cooling guys are
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like the kings of more is better. So two
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360 mil radiators must be better. Uses a
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close cell foam, nice soft foam. Happy to see this. Previous bit Phoenix cases
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I've seen packed in a hard foam which I do not prefer. Um I definitely like to
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see closed cell foam because in Canada our country is really big and cases and
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systems often have to travel very far about about an inch of padding by the
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way often have to travel very far before they reach their intended destination.
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So, what that means is if you've got a if you've got a hard foam,
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you might be in trouble because it'll survive the first drop for sure and it
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might survive the second drop. But I can tell you now, it's probably not going to
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survive the third drop because once it breaks, the structural integrity is not
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as good as it was before it was broken, which stands to reason. So, let's have a
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look at the aesthetic of the case. 1 2 3 4 5 and a/4 inch base. Beautiful brushed
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metal Bit Phoenix logo here on the front. It has what they're calling a
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classic Shinobi look. And I would agree that the Shinobi look is very classic
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with clean lines, nice square overall design. Although I don't know if you can
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call the Shinobi a classic case just yet because it hasn't been on the market
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very long, although it's probably on its way. Here on the front, we've got our
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charging port. So there it's marked with a battery and it's colorcoded yellow.
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We've got four super speed USB3 ports, headphones, microphone, power, and
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reset. That's a nice recessed reset. So, it's not that easy to hit by accident.
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Wonder how to get this off. It's got to be a way to do it. All right, let's move
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around to Well, I guess the sides are pretty similar. You're not going to need to see the other side cuz it pretty much
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looks a little something like this. So, you got your top piece. This is using the soft touch. The front bezel's using
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soft touch. This is just a powder coated metal finish, although it's not bad. And
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then on the back, see, this is what used to pass for water
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cooling ready. Now the manufacturers, including Bit Phoenix for this
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particular case, are actually building in mounting space for radiators. It used
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to be they were like, "Yeah, you can, you know, run to a radiator outside of your case cuz someone actually does
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that." No, they don't. So, this is not water cooling ready, but it's there in
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case you actually do want to use it. And you could even run two separate loops.
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So, I guess that's kind of convenient if you're one of those guys who does run
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chilled liquid, for example. I have done it, so I shouldn't say nobody does it,
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but it's just more rare. This is actually very solid. This is a big side
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panel, so you have to use a fairly thick grade of metal in order to have it have
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very, very little flex like that. You guys see that? Not bad at all.
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I mean, this is a slightly more expensive case than I've typically looked at in the past from Bit Phoenix,
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so I guess it stands to reason that the overall build quality and the features
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are a little bit uh sort of higher grade. But yeah, I'm really impressed so
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far to be to be completely blunt with you guys. So, why don't we start with uh
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I'll start with this side. Okay. So, we have our cables. We have
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Oh, okay. At least it uses a nice soft rubber so it's easy to fix. There we go.
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We have our cables right here. So, there is your power,
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two front USB 3s, your front audio as
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well as your front panel connectors and your front USB 2 and other more
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different front USB 2. So that's so you have additional power presumably for
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that charging port. All right, we've got
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lots of cable management grommets. So regardless of what kind of a motherboard
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you want to put in here, you can see we've actually got EATX mounting holes
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way over here. We've got standard mounting ATX mounting holes right here
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and then up to EATX with 3 4 5 6 7 8
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nine PCI slots all the way down to here.
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It supports a standard power supply with
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four Oh, these are really nice. These are nice high quality rubber. Uh nice uh
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rubber mounting points that hold it a little bit off the bottom of the case.
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Filtered intake and it can go up to pretty much as long as you want uh
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before bumping into anything and not fitting anymore.
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In the back, we have a 120 or 140 mm
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fan, whichever you prefer, although it comes with a bit Spectre 120 mil. Up in
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the top we have what is hold on can't remember includes two 230. Yeah. So we
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have a 230 mm cooling fan. Although you can see if I tip it even more the
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mounting holes are available here for that triple radiator. So that's where
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that's going to go. And there's actually a fair amount of space between this and
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the top of the motherboard which is a bit of a rarity these days. Even though
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by the time you put a radiator and fans on it, you're going to need that space.
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So, it's good to see that Bit Phoenix has gone ahead and included that. I
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don't see yet how to take off this top piece, although I really would like Oh,
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there we go. Okay, that was easy. Uh, did I break it? Oh, okay. So, basically,
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we've got the um 230 mil fan here. We've
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got the 360 mil here. You've got Oh, look at this. You've got access to the
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front panel here. So, if you wanted to, I don't know, rewire something or
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something, then you could you could do that. So, let's go ahead and put that
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back on. Mhm.
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And line it up and force it.
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There we go. Okay. Uh, hard drive mounting. So, 1 2 3 4 5 6
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7. These are compatible with 3 and 1/2
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as well as 2 and 1/2 in drives. They have some flex to them, although my
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experience leads me to believe that they're probably a lot more sturdy once
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you actually put a drive in them. The other 230 mil fan is here in the front.
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This is a Spectre fan, but guys, bear in mind these are reasonably high quality
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fans. Um, as Sorry. So, that one's in the front.
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You can actually take this whole cage and you can undoing the screws in the
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bottom, I think. Yes. undoing the screws
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in the bottom. You can actually turn the whole thing 90° if you want, if you
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don't need the additional space uh over here. So, the benefit of that is you're
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going to get slightly better air flow through and between the drives versus if
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you have it, see this way. See how it kind of blocks a lot of the air flow?
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So, that way it'll only be blocked where you actually have drives installed.
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However, this has a nicer aesthetic in my opinion because you have more options
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in terms of routing the wires to your drives. So, I personally would leave it
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the way it is, but it's nice to have the option, and it's nice to be able to take
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it out entirely. I mean, if you decide you want to turn this case into a modding project of some sort, you've
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actually got a lot of flexibility in here because it's basically a fairly
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plain, fairly clean looking box with a lot of space inside it. Um, you can
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contrast that with something like the Cosmos 2 where it's a very large case,
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but because of the way they've compartmentalized it, it's mostly useful
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for a very specific type of user, a very
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specific type of build, whereas this is more flexible, but maybe fewer features
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off the hop. Okay, so here's your toolless mounts. These are toolless.
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That's pretty much it. Let's go ahead and turn it around. Let's see what we got in terms of room for cable routing.
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cuz yeah, it's fine and good to design a case that can hold all this hardware.
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But if you can't reach anything with the cables, look at all that space. So that
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is look at that. We've got like looks like over an inch of space behind the
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motherboard tray for routing cables. That is outstanding. And you can also
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see that by the time you install a drive here, you're still going to have like a
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very, very reasonable amount of room behind your drives to route your SATA
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cables to route your power cables down to where they need to go, which is to
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the power supply or over to your motherboard without any hassle. So, I'm
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glad to see that reasonably big CPU cutout. I wouldn't have minded seeing
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something a touch bigger. It could have come over here, but in its place, Bit
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Phoenix has included uh securing points for routing cables behind the
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motherboard tray. Cannot emphasize enough how important these are because
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these a lack of these is half of the reason that you'll often end up in a
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situation where you are trying to close your other side panel and you can't
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because the cables are all crossing each other every time you let go of them. So
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if you can tie everything down, you can often have a much tidier build because
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of it. So let's see what we've got in terms of included accessories. Here is a
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Oh, this is kind of neat. So it's a 5 and 1/4 to 3 and 1/2 in bay. And then it
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also includes a fan mount, I'm assuming.
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Includes a 2 and 1/2 in drive mount, that's for sure. As well as 3 and 1/2 in
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drive mount that looks an awful lot like a fan mount. So I guess you guys can let
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me know if I'm wrong or right about that one.
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Okay, so inside here we've got Hey, look
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at this. more like cable management stuff with little double-sided tapes.
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And um these are actually relatively long zip ties, which may seem trivial,
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but it really does seem like a lot of uh case manufacturers cheap out on the zip
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ties. They give you ones that are like this long, and you're like, "Okay, so I can like wrap that around one cable, one
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ATX cable, um speaker, as well as all of
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the mounting screws and general whatnotss you will need. So, thank you
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for checking out my unboxing and first look or overview or whatever you want to
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call it of the Bit Phoenix Shinobi XL.
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So far, I would say that given the price point it's coming in at, and guys, don't
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ask me the price. I almost always put a link in the description of the video so
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you can click and you can see the price in either Canadian dollars or US
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dollars. So, there you go. Um, but given the price point, I'd say it's very, very
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competitive feature-wise with a lot of the other stuff out there. So, don't
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