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Camera review: Olympus PEN E-P2 Micro Four Thirds Mirrorless

The folks at Olympus sent me a PEN E-P2 for me to review and I got to use it for about a month. As I usually do with the cameras I review, the E-P2 became my primary camera. I took it everywhere with me and I shot both photos and video with it. A succinct description of my thoughts on the camera goes as follows: superb design, diminutive, well-made, clearly thought out, reliable and a joy to use.

Details

This camera made me think seriously about switching to it permanently, and using it as my primary camera all the time. I loved it so much I didn’t want to give it back (I had to give it back in the end). I loved everything about it. Even its few flaws pale in comparison with the advantages it gives you. I’m not the only one who raves about it. My wife loved it too. Other photographers loved it. People on the street would stop me to ask about it. And it’s no surprise, because it looks really good.

Raoul, using the Olympus PEN E-P2. Photographer: Thomas Hawk.

All that wonderful design and the overall good looks wouldn’t mean much without actual performance, and boy, this camera really delivers! The photos are superb, wonderfully well exposed, details are great at 1:1 (100%), low light performance is beautiful, even with the fairly slow (f/3.5-5.6) kit lens, and auto white balance is right on the money (not too cool in low light, which was the case with earlier Olympus cameras, and not too warm, either).

The PEN E-P2 isn’t perfect. There are a few sticking points. The two you’re likely to notice are battery life and autofocus failure in low light.

I’m used to battery life that hovers around 500-700 shots per charge. Perhaps that’s why I usually take that many photos when I visit a place. Or perhaps it’s just a coincidence, I don’t know. I do carry a spare battery when I shoot with my usual camera, so that means I can usually take 1200-1500 shots before I’m out of juice. The E-P2’s battery runs out around 250-350 shots, and it may run out faster if you take a lot of photos in rapid succession. That was a bit of a surprise to me, and since I didn’t have an extra battery, it did limit the amount of shots I could take. So, my advice to you is to get an extra battery (or two) depending on your shooting habits.

In low light (and I mean fairly low light, with little contrast between lighter and darker colors) the E-P2 will keep searching, trying to focus, and it will finally give up after a few seconds. You can overcome this if you use a faster lens, or if you switch to AF+MF or MF. That way you can choose to focus manually after the camera says it can’t do it, or you can start focusing manually right away.

Expecting the E-P2 to shine all around is a mistake. No camera is going to be perfect. In every camera ever made, some features were taken out, or couldn’t be put in at all. I look at the E-P2 as I look at my MINI Cooper S. It’s diminutive, the design is gorgeous, and the performance is great for my needs. I didn’t buy my MINI expecting it to perform like a Hummer, and by the same token, you don’t buy a PEN E-P2 expecting it to work like a Nikon D3X or a Canon EOS 1D Mark IV. They’re different cameras, designed for different purposes. When you buy an E-P2, you expect it to be light, versatile, stay out of the way, take good photographs (great photographs, actually), and to shoot HD video. It does all those things beautifully, and more.

I thought I’d place some weight on the DxOMark ratings for the E-P2 after I saw them, but in the end, it wasn’t a concern. It’s like the iPad, you see. You don’t get it until you hold it in your hands. Then it clicks. It’s the same with the E-P2. After you begin using it, you get it, and you don’t want to let go of it, because you know you can get great pictures with it, and you love the way it works, and the way it feels.

Even my wife, who doesn’t like taking photos with my Canon 5D, because she thinks it’s too much work to get the camera set up and adjusted, and doesn’t like it even when it’s on full auto, loved the PEN E-P2 and was able to take great photos with it. That showed me that Olympus was able to strike a great balance between a DSLR that will cater to the needs of a pro through its many buttons and manual settings, and will also please the amateur by assisting them unobtrusively as they use it.

We’d do well to remember a few things about Olympus here:

  • First company to come out with a self-cleaning sensor for a DSLR
  • First company to come out with Live View for a DSLR
  • First company to come out with magnified view for TTL MF on a DSLR
  • First company to come out with the idea of capturing video and photos with same DSLR sensor. I call it the “idea”, because what they did was to capture Live View video shown on the camera’s display via the main sensor, and the leap from that to recording video from the sensor is a fairly small one.
  • First company to come out with the smallest DSLR on the market. The E-420 was the first one, and now the PEN picks up Olympus’ famed lineage of analog cameras and takes it digital.

Even though larger companies like Canon and Nikon are reaping the benefits of implementing things like self-cleaning sensors and live view and magnified focus assist, and HD video, it’s really Olympus who did the hard work to bring these features to the market. Their implementation of these features may not be the flashiest or the loudest, but they were first.

I’m going to repeat a few things I wrote in August 2008, in an article entitled “DSLRs and video to converge“, after the Nikon D90, the first DSLR that could also shoot video, had been launched:

As good as the [Nikon] D90 is though, it will soon be eclipsed. Why? Market forces. How long do you think it will be before we’ll have a DSLR that can record 1080p HD video? Or how about an even smaller and thinner DSLR than currently possible? How about a DSLR that looks and weighs about the same as a point-and-shoot, but gives you photo quality that’s equivalent to (or exceeds) today’s DSLRs? It’s all coming.

Keep in mind the time when I wrote those things, and what came afterward. Just a few short months later, the Canon 5D Mark II came on the market, and it could record 1080p video. The floodgates had opened. And now we have a smaller and thinner DSLR than ever thought possible (Olympus PEN), one that looks and weighs about the same as a point-and-shoot camera (Olympus PEN), but gives you photo quality that exceeds that of other DSLRs. And there’s a huge difference in sensor size between that of a typical digicam and that of a PEN camera, as you can see below. (The sensor of the PEN camera is on the right.)

Here’s what else I said back then…

You know where else I’ll be proven wrong? Back when I attended the Olympus E-3 launch party, I talked about the camera’s (somewhat) limited 10 megapixel resolution, and I thought they had reached the limitations of the Four Thirds 2x cropped sensor. I thought the sensor’s surface area was too small to get more resolution out of it. But now that Canon has proven you can get 16 megapixels out of a 1.6x cropped sensor, I don’t see why you can’t get 12 megapixels or more out of a 2x cropped sensor.

I had my doubts about whether or not the Olympus engineers would be able to squeeze proper low light performance out of the four thirds sensor while increasing resolution, given the sensor’s size when compared to a full 35mm sensor, but they’ve done it! The PEN E-P2 goes up to 6400 ISO if you want it to, and the photos taken at 1600 ISO are definitely usable. Even the ones taken at 3200 ISO look pretty good to me. I’d reserve 6400 ISO for daylight use, such as when you want to take a high-speed photograph. Nighttime photos taken at 6400 ISO were fairly grainy, but then again, I was using the slower kit lens, whose aperture stops at f/3.5.

One last quote:

Wait, it gets even better. The current aspect ratio of Four Thirds cameras is 4:3. The aspect ratio of Micro Four Thirds cameras will be 16:9. That’s the same aspect ratio used in movies. Where do you think that’s going? It means your photos and your videos will have the same aspect ratio, and the line between photography and videography will get even more blurred, and it’s quite possible that in the near future, we’ll have 1920×1080p HD video recorded by a tiny little DSLR with a tiny little lens on it.

Okay, I was wrong about that one. Things are even better now. The PEN E-P2 will let you shoot at the following aspect ratios: 4:3, 3:2, 16:9 and 6:6. It shoots 720p HD video at 16:9, and it’s only a (short) matter of time before the PEN will be able to shoot 1080p HD video, as predicted. Keep in mind it will still be the tiniest little camera with a fairly large sensor and a mechanical shutter on the market, with a tiny little interchangeable lens on it, and that will make all the difference.

While I’m on the subject of video, do you want to know what else sets the PEN apart from other DSLRs that can shoot HD video? The fact that you can choose between several auto-focus modes, or image stabilization modes, or adjust both aperture and shutter speed, and apply live art filters to the videos, in-camera. I don’t know of another DSLR that lets you do this. As a matter of fact, you can shoot video in P, A, S or M modes, and you can adjust the aperture live, as you’re shooting. You can adjust the zoom, and if you have AF tracking enabled, your subject will continue to stay in focus. And you can see or preview all of the adjustments you’re making, on the screen or in the viewfinder, instantly.

Hands-on Video Review

I put together a hands-on video review of the E-P2, which includes the unboxing, a run-down of the camera’s exterior and its accessories, initial impressions and sample photos and video taken with it.

Olympus PEN E-P2 Hands-on Review

Specifications

While you can find all the specs you’d want and more on the Olympus PEN website, I’ll point out the more important ones here:

  • 12.3 megapixels resolution (4032 x 3024 pixels)
  • SSWF (Super Sonic Wave Filter) dust reduction system
  • Micro four thirds mount (of course)
  • 17.3 mm x 13 mm LCD screen, 3 inches across, 230,000 dots, 100% FOV
  • 11-area AF System: Imager Contrast AF (S-AF, C-AF, S-AF+MF, MF, C-AF+TR)
  • Shutter, 60 – 1/4000 sec or up to 30 min in bulb mode
  • 3 fps drive, up to 10 sequential RAW images or 12 sequential JPG images
  • TTL Image Sensor Metering: 324-area multi-pattern metering, center-weighted or spot-metering, EV 0-18
  • Flash synchronization: 1/30 – 1/180
  • Photo ISO: Auto 200-6400 or Manual 100-6400 in 1/3 or 1 EV Steps
  • Movie ISO: Auto or Manual 160-1600
  • Color Space: sRGB, AdobeRGB
  • RAW, JPEG, RAW+JPEG for photos
  • AVI for videos, 30 fps, limited to 2 GB per file, 720p HD (1280 x 720 pixels), 480p SD (640 x 480 pixels), max recording time 7 min for HD, 14 min for SD video
  • Wave Format Base Stereo PCM/16-bit, 44.1 kHz for sound
  • SDHC memory card recommended (can use older SD cards, but they’re not recommended for HD video)
  • Live View, 100% FOV, 7x or 10x magnification assist for MF
  • Image Stabilizer for photos: 3 modes (2D, Vertical and Horizontal), up to 4EV steps compensation
  • Image Stabilizer for videos: shifting electronic image (aka Digital IS)
  • Aspect ratio: 4:3, 3:2, 16:9, 6:6
  • Battery life: up to 300 shots
  • Dimensions: 4.74in (W) x 2.75in. (H) x 1.37 in (D) / 120.5 mm (W) x 70mm (H) x 35mm (D) (excluding protrusions)
  • Weight: 11.1oz/335g (body only), 13.6/385g (body, battery and media)

Sample Photos and Videos

I took the camera with me to the Flagler Museum and The Breakers in Palm Beach, to the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens in Delray Beach, to the Boardwalk on Hollywood Beach, where I met with Thomas Hawk, and to the Vizcaya Museum in Miami. If I had gotten it sooner, I’d have taken it with me to Las Vegas as well. I also used it heavily inside and outside the house. I shot photos and video with it in all sorts of light conditions — like this video on shaving. After an initial winnowing process, I have 954 photos taken with it in my photo library, and 2½ (149 minutes) of HD video recorded with it.

I didn’t get the chance to edit and publish all of the photos and video clips taken with the camera yet, but I will get to all of them in the near future, and will post them here on my blog, so stay tuned for that. Until then, here’s a good selection of what I’ve already edited.

This first photo shows what you can get right out of the camera. I set the E-P2 on i-Auto, and as you can see, the light is a mix between strong daylight and shadows. With other cameras, you’d get more contrast between the light and dark areas, and you wouldn’t see so much detail on the tree bark, for example. But the E-P2 was able to keep the sky blue and still give me vibrant, light greens and browns in the shadowy areas, which is great.

Notice again how it was able to render great detail in the shadowy areas, even when shooting directly into the sun.

Notice the fine detail and soft bokeh in this macro photograph of a palm frond. This was taken with the 14-42mm kit lens. Even though the lens is said to focus properly only from 0.25 m/0.82 ft to infinity, when the camera was set to Macro mode, it could focus much closer, up to a couple of inches away from the subject. Keep in mind this is not a point-and-shoot digicam that you can set to Macro and be done with it, but a DSLR with an interchangeable lens, which is much more complicated and normally has limitations on what it can do. After all, that’s why these lenses are interchangeable, because they’re built for specific purposes. Yet this kit lens proved to be much more versatile than I thought.

These are colors obtained right out of the camera. If you’d like to see the specifics of a photo, feel free to download it and view the EXIF data, it’s included in each sample photograph.

This next photo is unedited once more. It’s what the camera gave me at 14mm (28mm effective) and 1600 ISO. It was a fairly dark room, and I shot this against a bright window with early afternoon daylight (2 pm) coming right at the camera. Notice the detail and lack of noise in the darker areas.

This was a particularly dark room. It appears well lit only because I shot this at 1/20th of a second and 1600 ISO. Notice once more how vibrant the colors are, and how good the auto white balance is.

This next photo shows that you can get some neat bokeh effects if you play with the manual focus. The photo is unprocessed, as the camera made it.

Another reason to like the PEN E-P2 is that I can take great portraits with it. Yes, you’ve got to love the bokeh you can get with really fast lenses like the Canon EF 50mm f/1.4, but you’ve also got to love the clarity of an Olympus camera. The whole face is in focus, and every minute detail can be seen if you zoom in. It feels like you can almost touch the skin of the person whose portrait you’ve taken. It’s a great characteristic, and I noticed this way back when I was shooting with the Olympus C-3000Z, as you can see in this photo from 2005. The photo you see below is of my wife, Ligia, and once again, it’s right out of the camera. It’s incredible how brilliant the colors are.

Here are a few more portraits I took of her with the PEN E-P2. I love this camera.

Here are a few more sample photos taken at Vizcaya, in Miami.

A few sample videos (shot in 720p HD) are embedded below. There are more on the way, as mentioned above. I used software motion stabilization on a fair number of the clips, as I shot them handheld, without a tripod or any other sort of external stabilization device, and I foolishly forgot to activate the in-camera stabilization.

Tea Ceremony – Morikami Museum

On the Beach at The Breakers

A Tour of the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens

Accessories

When you buy the PEN E-P2, I recommend you definitely get the following accessories:

  • Li-Ion battery (PS-BLS1) — get an extra one or even two of these, depending on how many shots you need to take per session
  • MMF-2 Four Thirds to Micro Four Thirds Adapter — this is a must-have accessory, as it lets you mount any four thirds lens onto any PEN camera
  • 16 GB SDHC Card — get whatever brand you like, but make sure it’s SDHC
  • VF-2 Electronic Viewfinder — if you didn’t get this in a kit with your PEN camera, it’s really worth getting, as it will pivot up and act as a WLF (Waist Level Finder); you can see me using the PEN E-P2 with the VF-2 mounted onto it and pivoted upward in the second photo from the top of the article.

These next accessories come down to personal preference. Get these if you like them:

The current selection of micro four thirds lenses is somewhat slim, but it’s growing. And the beauty of having adapters like the MMF-2 I listed above is that you can use any regular four thirds lenses with PEN cameras, so you don’t have to buy extra micro four thirds lenses if you don’t want to.

But what if you’re heavily invested in Canon or Nikon gear, and would love to get a PEN camera? That’s okay too, because there’s a Canon lens to Micro Four Thirds mount adapter. It’s the same if you’re a Nikon shooter. There is an adapter that will let you use Nikon lenses with a PEN camera.

Two companies out there make these kinds of adapters: Novoflex, a German company, and Fotodiox, an American company. Since I’m heavily invested in Canon EF lenses, I called Fotodiox and asked them what they have for me. They have a specific Canon EF lens to Micro Four Thirds mount adapter, but it does not let you control aperture, so you’ll be shooting wide open. They did tell me they’re working on a specific adapter for Canon EF lenses that will let you mount them to PEN cameras and control aperture and auto-focus, just like you would with a normal lens. They said the price for it would be around $300 when it comes out later this year. That would be a very cool adapter, if it indeed delivers on its promise!

Then I called Novoflex and asked them whether they have a Canon EF to Micro Four Thirds adapter, but they don’t. They do have a Canon FD to Micro 4/3 adapter, which if I’m not mistaken will let you mount EF lenses as well, but you’ll be shooting wide open, without the ability control aperture, and of course you’ll be focusing manually.

I also found out that Canon makes a nice, simple metal EF lens to Micro Four Thirds mount adapter, and it’s only $40! So if you don’t mind shooting wide open and using manual focus, then definitely get this adapter, because it looks sturdy and it’s inexpensive.

Summary

It’s time to wrap things up. What can I say, other than what I’ve already said? I’m in love with this camera!

A number of significant design and engineering ideas from Olympus came together beautifully in the digital PEN: diminutive size, great sensor, beautiful design, IS, SSWF, Micro Four Thirds, HD video, light and capable lenses, a whole host of features design to make things easier for the photographer, and beyond the hardware, a tangible sense of soul, a certain something that binds you to the camera as you begin to use it.

Just like the analog PEN revolutionized the way people thought of cameras and of how they took photos, the digital PEN is a wonderful continuation of the PEN legacy, a beautiful leap through time, from film to the digital world of today.

Images of PEN E-P2 used courtesy of Olympus. The PEN E-P2 can be purchased from Amazon or B&H Photo.

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Thoughts

Not happy with changes to Kinder Surprise

Updated: Since I wrote this post and made the video, I have learned that Kinder Surprise and Kinder Joy are two different products and what had happened is that Kinder Surprise was temporarily taken off the market due to shipping concerns during the warm months. Now both are back on the market and I’m happy as can be getting the occasional Kinder Surprise and playing with the toy. 🙂

I used to love Kinder Joy, the little egg-shaped chocolate treats. They’d have these nice little toys inside, often cars, wrapped in these reasonably tasty shells made of milk chocolate. Now they’ve changed things completely.

The toys are these cheap things that fall apart as soon as you assemble them, and they’re no longer appealing, and the eggshell chocolate is gone. Even though they’re still wrapped in a plastic egg-shaped shell, the chocolate is now this soft fudge of white chocolate which sits on one side of the egg, while the toy is in the other half.

I guess it’s cheaper to pour the chocolate into half a shell than to mold it into an eggshell shape while the toy is inside. It’s also cheaper to forgo sterilizing the plastic parts for the toy, since they’re now sealed separately into other half a shell. And it’s also much cheaper to go with flimsy things instead of nice little cars.

I made a video of one of these “late-model” Kinder Joy eggs, so you can see this for yourselves.

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Reviews

CFL vs LED rate of adoption

I think it was sometime in 1997 when my college (Middlebury) ran an energy efficiency campaign and held a few sessions for students where they could learn about new technologies, such as CFL (Compact Fluorescent) bulbs. Those who attended were given their very own CFL bulb, for free. Prices then were about $20-30 per bulb. I used mine in my desk lamp, then took it with me when I graduated, and it made various moves with me, lighting various lamps of mine, until 1½ years ago, when it finally gave out one evening.

It was a spiral-type CFL bulb like the one you see below, it wasn’t a particularly powerful model, and it certainly took its time to get warm and reach its rated lumens (10-15 minutes), but I thought it was a cool concept and I was glad to do my bit for energy efficiency.

Nowadays, there are a ton of CFL bulb models, for both indoors and outdoors, made to fit all lamps, of all shapes and sizes, and even colors. I’m not just talking about different bulb temperatures, but also literally about bulb colors. I’ve seen blue, red, green and orange CFL bulbs — I don’t who’d buy them, but they’re out there.

They even have dimmable CFLs, which is a big deal for some people.

If you pause a moment to think about this, it took over 30 years for CFL technology to mature and reach the same sort of production and adoption levels as incandescent light bulbs, which were invented in 1879 by Thomas A. Edison [source]. CFL bulbs were invented by Ed Hammer from GE in 1976. Initially shelved by the company because they deemed the technology too expensive, the design leaked out and became popular [source]. Commercial models first came to the market in 1980 from Philips, then in 1985 from Osram [source]. I, along with many others, first heard of CFL bulbs as a new technology about 13 years ago, after they’d already been on the market for over 15 years.

LED (Light Emitting Diode) bulbs have an interesting history. The bulbs themselves as we know them today (replacements for CFL and incandescent bulbs) have a fairly short history, having only been introduced in 1999, although their ancestor, the now-humble light-emitting diode, has lived inside our electronics for decades. Unlike with incandescent and CFL bulbs, it’s much harder to attribute credit for them to any single person. Generally speaking, Nick Holonyak, an engineer at GE, is considered the inventor of individual LEDs, having made them in 1962. LED light bulbs are a different story altogether, and it’s much more of a group effort, with many people and companies working together to produce commercially viable versions of this new lighting technology.

It was the Philips company who came up with the first 1W LED bulbs in 1999. In 2002, Lumileds came out with 5W LEDs [source]. After that, progress came quicker. The key with LEDs is the ability to increase their light output to make them viable replacements for regular light bulbs. Newer, more powerful LEDs have been introduced since then by various companies such as Cree, Inc., Seoul Semiconductor, Nichia Corporation and others that have each been more powerful, brighter and efficient than their predecessors.

That brings us to where we are today, which is just a few short years since 1999 — relatively speaking. It’s 2010, and LED bulbs are getting massive press attention. There are already a ton of models on the market, from various companies, in various sizes, color temperatures and screw types. The only thing holding them back from mass adoption are their prices, which are still hovering above $30 per bulb. Some bulbs go as high as $50 or more.

There are distinct advantages to LED bulbs, or else they wouldn’t get all this attention. For one thing, they’re even more efficient than CFL bulbs, and for another, they contain no harmful mercury, unlike CFL bulbs. (Given the mercury levels contained in CFLs, it’s unfortunate and thoughtless of the EU to outlaw incandescent light bulbs as they did last year, in 2009.) Finally, LED bulbs last a LOT longer — their projected life span is 20-30 years, which is more than the 5-10 years we expect CFL bulbs to last.

Another benefit that doesn’t get as much airtime is their ability to operate at voltage ranges, not at specific voltages, which has been the case with all bulbs so far. I’ve seen LED bulbs that can operate from 85-250V, and that’s huge for me. It means I can take a bulb I bought in the US to Europe and use it there, or vice-versa. For those who travel between continents, this is a big deal, just like it was a big deal when companies started putting out 110-240V adapters for electronics. It meant I could take my laptop to Europe and use it there without a separate transformer, or I could take my cellphone along and charge it without a separate transformer.

I first heard about LED bulbs a couple of years ago, when LED christmas lights first came out. Remember that time? The lights were expensive, but given how much electricity gets consumed with festive lighting during the holiday season, switching to them was a compelling choice. As I write this, I’m looking at the LED lights in our Christmas tree, including the LED star on top (we still haven’t taken it down because it’s so nice to look at), and I realize how far we’ve come.

Given how fast LED bulbs have progressed, technologically, I think it’s safe to assume the public will also adopt them faster than CFLs as well. LED bulbs have the added advantage of having reached mass production much sooner than CFLs, and having made it to store shelves a lot sooner than CFLs. The only thing that remains is for their price to become more affordable. Market-wise, I think they’ll cannibalize the CFLs first, not the incandescents, simply because the same people who are interested in CFLs will tend to switch to LEDs now. The people who are still buying incandescents, for whatever reason, such as the requirements of their electrical installation or their price, will still continue to buy incandescents. What may hurt the sales of LED bulbs though is the fact the a lot of people have already invested heavily in CFL bulbs. My parents and I have switched almost all of the bulbs in our homes to CFLs, have already made that investment, and will likely wait until our CFL bulbs give out before we get new LEDs.

Still, when you consider that the market for lighting products continues to increase, I think we’ll see increasing levels of LED bulb adoption, starting as early as this year.

Updated 12/10/10: According to this article from Care2, Sylvania and Philips have already begun selling more affordable LED light bulbs, at $20/bulb for about 60 watts of light output.

LED and CFL bulbs are available for purchase from Amazon.

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Reviews

Hardware preview: DroboElite

Drobo Pro side

➡ Updated 1/14/19: I have revised my opinion of Drobo devices. After experiencing multiple, serious data loss events on multiple Drobo models, even recent ones, I no longer consider them safe for my data.

Today, November 23, 2009, the new DroboElite becomes available from Data Robotics. It’s the top of the ladder when it comes to their product line: it’s the fastest, biggest, most configurable SAN they’ve got, and it eats terabytes for breakfast. It’s got multi-host support, dual Gigabit Ethernet ports, and it can have up to 255 Smart Volumes.

Background

Data Robotics launched the original Drobo in mid-2007, then upgraded that to what we call the Firewire Drobo toward the end of 2008, introduced the DroboPro in April 2009, and now they’re launching the DroboElite, which you can see here, and the Drobo S, addressed in a separate post, also published today.

drobo-s-and-droboelite

This means the company now has four great pieces of hardware in their product line, geared toward different groups of consumers, starting with the desktop storage needs of the media-heavy consumer and going all the way to companies’ server rooms:

  1. Drobo,
  2. Drobo S,
  3. DroboPro and
  4. DroboElite

Design

The front of the DroboElite is identical to that of the DroboPro. The dimensions are the same — and they’d have to be, since it needs to fit into a 3U rack space and take the same rack mounting kit as the DroboPro. The weight is also the same: 16 lbs. 3 oz.

Drobo Pro top

Things are different in the back though. What you’ll see there is a lack of Firewire and the addition of a second Gigabit Ethernet port. The USB port has also been downgraded to the role of diagnostics. As you’ll see in a bit, there’s a reason for this change.

A side-by-side comparison of the backs of the DroboPro and the DroboElite makes the changes even clearer.

drobo-pro-and-drobo-elite

The inside of the DroboElite is once again identical to that of the DroboPro. There are eight drive slots, arranged vertically, plus the usual power, activity and action indicator lights.

Drobo Pro cover off

Performance

The DroboElite, like the DroboPro, is aimed toward SMBs, who are facing increasing data storage and virtualization needs, increasingly complex systems and limited budges. Also like the DroboPro, the DroboElite aims to make reliable storage dead simple. The eight-drive array in these two devices is self-managing and self-healing, and can be configured in single or dual-drive redundancy. It’s scalable, and with Smart Volumes, incredibly flexible. There’s no need for partitioning or file system expansion — a serious problem with traditional SANs.

droboelite-thin-provisioning

Having dealt with the problem of rigid LUN configurations, which lead to frequent and cumbersome free space issues, the Drobo’s ability to use a common drive pool for its Smart Volumes, and to reclaim deleted data blocks without any intervention from system admins is a Godsend.

For those of us familiar with the Drobo, it’s easy to overlook its amazingly easy upgrade path, where SATA drives of any capacity and brand can be added at any time, resulting in lower costs and no time and effort lost for needless data migrations.

If you’ve looked at the DroboPro, and now you wonder what the DroboElite brings to the table, there are three significant advantages to the latter:

  1. Multi-host connectivity: whereas the DroboPro could only be connected to a single host (two if using VMware), the DroboElite can connect to 16 different hosts.
  2. Higher performance: thanks to its dual Gigabit Ethernet ports, a host of advanced capabilities were put in for the express purpose of speeding up its bandwidth. The DroboElite offers up to 50% faster throughput than the DroboPro. That’s also the reason the FireWire interface was dropped, and the USB interface was downgraded to diagnostics-only. This machine was built to run on a fast Gigabit network and to give you the most speed possible through it, up to 200 MB/sec, as a matter of fact, which trumps any other sort of current interface, by far.
  3. More Smart Volumes: the Drobo Pro can only accommodate up to 16 SVs, but the DroboElite will let you configure up to 255 SVs, all of them using a common drive pool and automatically reclaiming deleted disk space.

droboelite-consolidated-storage

If we look toward the future and other possible improvements to the DroboElite, perhaps Light Peak might play a role in that (see my Drobo S review for more on Light Peak and the Drobo). Still, since this is a network device, and networks are still Gigabit at best, even if direct DroboElite-to-host connections are made with Light Peak, there’s still the Ethernet bottleneck. It’ll be interesting to see how this gets resolved over time, and I’m sure plenty of people are already at work on this problem already.

Pricing and Availability

The DroboElite has a suggested price of $3,499 by itself, or $5,899 with an 8×2 TB drive bundle, for a total capacity of 16 TB. Because it’s a more specialized product, it will only be sold through select direct marketers, resellers and integrators such as Synnex, Bell Micro and Ingram Micro. It is available for purchase immediately, provided initial stocks aren’t sold out.

The DroboElite is also available with a rackmount kit, just like the DroboPro. The whole assembly will take up 3Us in a standard 19″ server rack.

Drobo Pro rackmount kit

drobo-pricing-and-availability

The DroboElite is available for purchase from Amazon or B&H Photo and other retailers.

Images used courtesy of Data Robotics. Side-by-side comparison shots were created by me, using press images from Data Robotics, so please obtain my permission if you’d like to use them elsewhere.

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Reviews

Hardware preview: Drobo S

Drobo_S_Right_Hi

➡ Updated 1/14/19: I have revised my opinion of Drobo devices. After experiencing multiple, serious data loss events on multiple Drobo models, even recent ones, I no longer consider them safe for my data.

Today, November 23, 2009, the new Drobo S says hello to the world. It’s a supercharged, triple interface version of the 2nd-generation (FW800) Drobo, with eSATA, FW800, USB 2.0, a faster processor, 5 drive bays and dual drive redundancy. It combines the best of both worlds — the smaller form factor of the regular Drobo with the larger capacity, speed and data protection of the DroboPro. Data Robotics summarizes this as “more capacity, more protection and more performance”.

Excuse my little pat on the back here, but when I first heard that Data Robotics was getting ready for a new product launch, an eSATA interface was the first thing that came to my mind. I’m glad to see I was right.

Background

Data Robotics launched the original Drobo in mid-2007, then upgraded that to what we call the Firewire Drobo toward the end of 2008, introduced the DroboPro in April 2009, and now they’re launching the Drobo S, which you can see here, and the DroboElite, addressed in a separate post, also published today.

drobo-s-and-droboelite

This means the company now has four pieces of hardware in their product line, geared toward different groups of consumers, starting with the desktop storage needs of the media-heavy consumer and going all the way to companies’ server rooms:

  1. Drobo,
  2. Drobo S,
  3. DroboPro and
  4. DroboElite

data-robotics-product-comparison

Design

Let’s first look at the exterior of the new Drobo S, to see what’s changed there. On its front side, you’ll notice the bezel is different. Whereas the trademark magnetic cover was flush with the metal bezel of the enclosure, now it’s recessed and no longer covers the entire front surface. The capacity meter was kept at the bottom of the enclosure, but it’s no longer underneath the plastic cover, which was kept square rather than made rectangular, to fit the now-taller Drobo. The power and transfer lights were also made visible and placed inline with the capacity meter. A row of vents was added above the capacity meter, to pull in cool air for the drive bays.

The new dimensions are 5.9″ wide x 7.3″ tall x 10.3″ long, as compared to the regular Drobo’s 6.3″ wide x 6.3″ tall x 10.7″ long. This makes the new Drobo S thinner and shorter than the regular Drobo, in spite of its 5 drive bays and the new eSATA interface. It is taller, though only by a single inch (2.54 cm). That’s an achievement in my book, and I’m sure the Drobo engineers spent quite a bit of time planning out the hardware layout. Kudos to them. The differences are made readily apparent when we look at the regular Drobo and the Drobo S side-by-side. Keep in mind the scale may be a bit off in real life, since I took two separate images and put them together in Photoshop for this article. This image isn’t an official one from Data Robotics, though the individual images are.

On the back of the new Drobo, we can see a much larger cooling grille, which makes sense given what we’ve discussed above. We also see something new, something which I’ve only seen on the DroboPro so far: a power switch. Then we see the rest of the stuff we expected, like the power connection (which is now marked by a shiny metal circle), the reset switch, the cable lock slot, and, of course, the triple interfaces: eSATA, Firewire 800 and USB 2.0.

Let’s look at a side-by-side comparison of the backs of the Drobo S and the regular Drobo, so we can see the differences in the design.

drobo-and-drobo-s-back

When I look at the Drobo S from all these angles, I’d say its design is much sleeker and more streamlined than that of the regular Drobo. There’s no doubt about it, I love it. I felt from the start that Drobo made storage sexy. There are very few storage enclosures on the market that look really good, and Drobo has looked great from the start. When you combine those looks with its amazing capabilities, the result is well worth my money.

You know what else? I think a future iteration of the regular Drobo’s enclosure will include the design elements of the Drobo S. I also believe at some point this same, newer design philosophy will be carried forward to the DroboPro and the new DroboElite.

Let’s look behind the front cover, to see how things look over there.

Drobo_S_Open_Hi

The five drive bays are clearly visible here, as well as the five action indicator lights, as Data Robotics calls them. On the Drobo S, the indicator lights give more status messages than on the regular Drobo, because each light is capable of displaying two colors at the same time. You can see what I mean by looking at this indicator scheme.

drobo-s-lights

Performance

Now let’s talk about performance. Clearly, with an eSATA port, the new Drobo S must also have the capability to stomach all that data that comes at it. It must be able to process all of it and write it to the drives fast enough to make the new interface worth getting. I haven’t tested the Drobo S in person (yet?) but Data Robotics says the new eSATA interface is “up to 50% faster than FireWire 800“. On the Drobo S, the FireWire 800 interface is also faster than on previous hardware, “up to 25% faster“. All these speeds are due to a new, faster processor that can crunch all of those data bits just as quickly as they get to it, writing each of them across the five drive bays.

In my phone conference with Mark Fuccio from Data Robotics, I asked him why Data Robotics hadn’t included a Gigabit Ethernet interface so that Drobo S could also be a NAS device. He explained that the direct-attach market is 4x bigger than the NAS market, so DRI will always go for that market first, and second, the eSATA interface on the Drobo S is faster than is possible going through file sharing protocols like Windows SMB or Apple’s AFP. The Drobo S has “performance ranges between 70-90 MB/sec or approximately 80-90% of the performance of the DroboPro’s iSCSI connection”.

I also asked him what he thought about Light Peak, and if we might see that in the Drobo as another interface next year. He didn’t say no, but he also didn’t promise anything, which was expected. He said it’s likely that DR will build it into the Drobo when and if Intel finalizes the specs and starts to make it available to companies.

It’s important to mention two features of the Drobo S which are just plain wonderful. One is the dual-drive redundancy, which is a feature borrowed from the DroboPro and is so important for those of us who absolutely must protect our data, or else. You can switch back and forth between single-drive and dual-drive redundancy at any time, but keep in mind there’s a capacity trade-off in dual-drive redundancy mode — that is, you get less available free space since the Drobo must now make sure your data is protected against two drive failures.

Dual drive redundancy is something Data Robotics was able to offer because it included five drive bays on the Drobo S. It would have been overkill on a four-drive unit, because it would have meant even less available space. Another effect of this dual drive redundancy is more capacity, up to 10 TB, as a matter of fact, given current hard drive specs. With five 2 TB drives in the Drobo S, you would indeed have 10 TB of space, but only 7.3 TB would be available for your data; the rest would be kept for data redundancy. Consult the handy chart below to see approximate capacities given typical drive combinations.

drobo-s-capacity

The second feature worth mentioning is the self-healing technology included with the Drobo S (also available in the DroboPro and DroboElite), which works as follows:

Even when sitting idle, Drobo S will continually examine the blocks and sectors on every drive, flagging questionable areas. This preemptive “scrubbing” helps ensure your data is being written only to the healthy areas of your drives, and that your data is always safe. Even if a drive fails, Drobo S keeps your data in the safest state possible, utilizing the available space on the remaining healthy drives.

I’d like to know if you get that with any other storage device on the market today. Compare it with RAID 0, where even if your drives don’t fail, any hardware or processor mistake in writing the correct bit sequences to the stripes will cause data corruption, leading to data loss.

Drobo_S_Left_Hi

Pricing and Availability

I was told the Drobo S will be available right away, as of today. It’s possible that initial supplies will be sold out, but more units will become available later. Suggested retail price is $799 for the Drobo S itself, or $1,799 for the Drobo S loaded with 5×2 TB drives. Although the price may seem high, keep in mind that at 10 TB capacity, it’s only 18 cents per GB for the Drobo S and the drives, together.

The Drobo S is available for purchase from Amazon or from B&H Photo.

Images used courtesy of Data Robotics. Side-by-side comparison shots were created by me, using press images from Data Robotics, so please obtain my permission if you’d like to use them elsewhere.

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