It may read like an early April Fool, but Akasa's latest case for the Raspberry Pi 4 is truly "amazing". The Maze Pro is an all black sandblasted anodized aluminum case with another interesting cooling design that resembles a ball bearing maze game. We say another as Akasa previously released the Gem Pro which featured a "gem" pattern which dissipated heat while looking cool.
Akasa's Maze Pro is no joke, it is a real product sat on our bench for testing. Made from sandblasted anodized aluminum, this all black case comes in two parts. The top part of the case is a typical all metal case with columns of aluminum designed to pull heat from the Broadcom SoC. But unlike other cases which also pull heat from the USB 3.0 host controller, a VL805 chip, the Maze Pro's additional aluminum column is positioned directly over the power management IC (PMIC) and used to keep this chip cool. How this will affect overall cooling, we won't know until we run our benchmarks.
Moving around the case, which measures 3.8 x 2.5 x 1.3 inches (97 x 65.5 x 35 mm) we see the usual cutouts for USB ports, power etc. A cutout for the camera CSI connector is present, but not one for the official display. A neat feature of the Maze Pro is a removable cover for the GPIO that enables access to all 40 GPIO pins but it looks a little tight for use with HATs. Next to the micro SD card cutout is a power button, programmable via a one line install script, this button can safely power off or wake the Raspberry Pi 4.
The Maze Pro is set to retail for £28.95 ($40) and Tom's Hardware will have a full review in the near future and we'll see how it stacks up against the best Raspberry Pi cases.
