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Installing an SSD is pretty easy as you just need to unscrew the cover, attach the M.2 drive along with the optional cooling pad, screw in the mounting screw and reattach the cover. Unfortunately, both the cover and the mounting screw are 5-point star shaped screws, which are not very common. However, there’s a screwdriver in the box.
How fast? Enclosures can only handle as much speed as their USB ports and the USB ports on your computer allow. Most 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch hard drive / SSD enclosures operate under standard 5 Gbps USB (USB 3 / 3.1 or 3.2 Gen 1). Most M.2 SSD enclosures operate at 10 Gbps (aka USB 3.1 or USB 3.2 Gen 2).
The SHE-C325 isn’t the most attractive enclosure on the market, but it does use mostly aluminum casing (the left part near the USB port is plastic) and at 4.5 x 1.5 x 0.4 inches, it’s pretty portable. SSK’s enclosure also comes with a thermal pad to help send heat to the aluminum casing, but you’ll only want to use it if your SSD doesn’t have a built-in heat spreader. If you want an SSD enclosure with some RGB bling and a swanky sci-fi design, Asus’s ROG Strix Arion is for you. The M.2 NVMe enclosure has two RGB lights, an illuminated ROG logo on the top and a small plastic fin on the side. These show a pleasing pink and purplish light show which Asus markets as being part of its “Aura Sync” RGB ecosystem. However, there doesn’t seem to be any way to actually control the lights as the Asus Armoury Crate software we tested with did not recognize the drive. When you start accessing the drive, a new screen automatically pops up to show you the read/write speed, data read/written this power session, and the total amount of data read/written over the life of the drive. The fastest enclosure we've tested, the ZikeDrive uses an ASMedia ASM2464 controller to deliver USB 4 read speeds that are 20 percent faster than we've seen on the competition. Write speeds were less impressive, but still strong in most scenarios. However, the ZikeDrive doesn't make the best list yet, because it's part of an IndieGoGo campaign and not available for general sale. There’s also a small, built-in battery that provides 5-10 seconds (depending on which model you get) of service time in the event of a power failure. That brief window of time might be enough to allow the drive to finish writing some data and avoid corrupting your drive in the event of an ill-timed unplugging.
While it may not offer the highest performance or absolute best value for money, it’s earned its place in my everyday carry, thanks to its minuscule size and great looks. The Sabrent EC-USASP has an on / off switch, something you won’t find on most SSD enclosures but a nice convenience if you want to leave it plugged in but only power it on when you need it. Most 2.5-inch SATA enclosures have USB 3.0 micro B as their output port and come with USB Type-A to micro B cables. However, the EC-USASP has a USB 3 Type-A port (5 Gbps) and comes with a Type-A to Type-A cable. So, if you are planning to connect the enclosure to a laptop that has only Type-C ports, you can use a USB Type-A to Type-C cable (something many people have lying around the house) to do so. I also have a couple Orico drives with fans, but those are just overkill and mostly for show. They do work, just big and require tools to swap drives. The next screen offers graphs of the drive’s temperature and input voltage, while the final screen allows you to upgrade the enclosure’s firmware. 9to5Mac’s TakeWith its USB-C connection, the enclosure is limited to a theoretical maximum speed of 10Gb/s, and in testing it with one of my 128GB SK Hynix drives, I was seeing real-world write speeds of 850MB/s and read speeds of about 900MB/s. Using a different SSD, you could get slightly faster speeds with the enclosure, but that connection means you won’t see the speeds possible on some Thunderbolt-connected enclosures. An array of SMART features To install our drive in this enclosure, we first had to remove the aluminum panel, which is attached with a tiny, 5-point star screw rather than a normal Philips head type. The enclosure comes with a small star-shaped screwdriver, but we lost it and had to go digging through our iFixit kit to find an appropriate head. The Orico’s M2PV-C3’s design is less polarizing than that of the SSK SHE-C325, but it actually uses cheaper materials, as the top panel is ridged aluminum but the sides and bottom are ABS plastic. The all-aluminum chassis has ridges to help with heat dissipation and it comes with both a thermal pad you can put on top of your SSD to keep it cool under prolonged loads. It’s a rather attractive silver enclosure that has a small cutout / handle area you can use for threading through a carabiner.
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