Akasa Soho AR Review

Introduction

As part of their new Performance & Good-Looking Soho Lineup, Akasa recently released their newest SOHO AR fans. Let's take a look at them and determine if they have more to offer than a nice look and the sturdiest frame.

What's in the Box?

Even if it does not tell us anything about the product itself, Akasa did invest quite a bit into the packaging of their SOHO Ar Fans.

First off you'll be greeted with a nicely designed box with some representational images of the Fan as well as some specs.

Once the inner Box is pushed out of its cover, you'll be greeted with a lightning show as Akasa thought it would be necessary to paint the complete inner box with an extremely reflective, mirror-like color.

After removing the fan, we found that Akasa tried to cover all the usage scenarios. Not only do they include the usual Fan Screws, but they also included a set of longer radiator screws in case the Fans will be used on top of a Watercooling setup.

Even though we do not believe that there are many cases in which a user purchased a Radiator or a complete AIO without getting these screws, we appreciate the effort.

On the sides of the box as well as on the inner box, there are specs printed. We  summarized the most important specs down below:

Installation

Installing the Akasa Soho AR Fans is as easy as any other fan. Put the Fan where it will need to be and screw it down with the Fan Screws.

To Power the Fan, the Soho AR's are using a 4-Pin PWM header which can be attached to one of the Motherboard's Fan headers.

The RGB is powered by a 3-Pin 5v ARGB header. Please note that there is no RGB Controller included with these Fans. This means that in the event that a Motherboard does not provide a 5v 3-Pin ARGB header, a separately available third-party ARGB controller needs to be purchased and used.

Appearance

When taking a closer look at Akasa's Soho AR Fans, there is one aspect that can immediately be noticed, Quality!

The Soho ARs are one of the sturdiest fans we have had so far. No matter how much force is applied, these Fans will stand their ground.

Akasa also thought about the little things, like the Rubber Pads around the Fan screw holes as well as a minimalistic usage of the brand name in the center of the fan, which unlike usually, is printed on a metal plate, providing the fan with a premium look.

The Fans RGB can also be summarized as minimalistic. There are 2 separate RGB rings that are circling around the Fan. One is seeable by looking straight at it, while the other one is slightly hidden towards the back of the fan, seeable from the side.

This second RGB ring allows the lights to be seen while having the Fan mounted in a position where you cannot look straight into the fan, e.g on top of a radiator mounted in the bottom of the case.

In general, we found the Akasa Soho AR to have a surprisingly high build quality while looking minimalistic and clean.

Benchmark

No matter how well a Fan is designed or how sturdy its frame is, it still needs to perform.

We Benchmarked the Akasa Soho AR on our Standard bench table and compared them to each of our other Fans.

The Benchmark consists of an Azza Hive Case, an AMD 3600x locked at 3.26 GHz (1.1vcore), and a Palit RTX 2060s.

In order to exaggerate the Results until we can see differences between the fans, we use a Be Quiet Pure Rock Slim without any fan in order to amplify the Fan's results.

While letting the Fans spin at 100% Fan speed, the Akasa Soho AR managed to keep the 3600x at 63°C, placing them at the same spot as the Noiseblocker eLoopX.

Turning the fan speed down to 50% let the Soho AR rise a couple of spots with the CPU heating up to 81°C.

As the benchmarks showed, the Akasa Soho AR are solid mid-tier fans. On each of our Benchmarks, the Soho ARs were positioned slightly behind our reference Arctic P12.

Conclusion

In general, Akasa's Soho AR Fans are good performing fans. In our benchmarks, they were able to land the first spot behind Arctic's P12s, which makes these excellent Mid-Tier-like performing Case Fans.

Even though we are not including these types of tests, the ARs high static pressure also allows them to be used as well-performing radiator fans. A feature that is specifically underlined by the radiator screws which Akasa is including in the box.

The most outstanding feature for us was the build quality. The Wings, the Frame, the packaging, and even the included extra radiator screws showed that Akasa wanted to make sure to deliver the best quality product without saving up on any of its aspects

When it comes to the look of a Fan, it is a highly subjective topic. We found the Fans to be looking clean and sleek while offering a glimpse of unicorn power with its two thin RGB see-through rings.

As good as the results of Akasa Soho AR Fans are, we also need to specify the price. Right now, the ARs can be bought for around 25€ or 24€. We find this price to be a bit on the too-much side, as fans like the Cooler Master Sickleflow 120 ARGB and Arctic P12 ARGB 0db are less expensive per fan while performing slightly better or quieter.

To summarize this review, if there is a particular reason why somebody wants to go with Akasa's Soho AR fans, there is no reason to not too as these are excellently performing case fans. Though we need to mention that there are fans with a better price-to-performance ratio.