NVME Enclosure

Really 3.5 stars... but extra 1/2 for value.Pros-- Solid metal case. Feels and looks nice- Good performance - just shy of 1GB/sec read and writes. Nearly 2X as fast as traditional SATA SSDs or even the Samsung T5. This is about the max you can expect from USB3.1. (see cons below).- Drive get hot, but apparently not hot enough to throttle performance. Drive longevity?Cons -- No thermal pads included - would be nice to control temp more. Also the slide-in construction, rather than closing like a clamshell might prevent the use of these anyways. "Vent holes" seem pointless and I can't imagine they do much for temperature.- The info provided here that you could expect performance of up to 2,100mb/sec... yes, from the NVME drive but NOT IN THIS ENCLOSURE. Vendor should remove graphic included here (crossed out with red X).- The enclosure's USB-C socket seems to be too shallow for the cable... and it does not plug in as deeply as it should.

I just bought this unit and installed my brand-new 1Tb ADATA SSD (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07K1J3C23/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05__o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)After it completed transferring just around 500Gb of content, the drive was sitting idle when I get an alert from Windows 10 that the USB device was reporting errors. The next thing I know is the QNine enclosure is quite hot to the touch and my ADATA SSD is no longer recognized.All I can say is I am irritated beyond belief and out a couple of hundred bucks.Update 2019-02-21Had an email conversation with the manufacturers "support" team. After a bit of back-and-forth (when they insisted I was using cloning software, rather than plain old Windows 10 File Explorer), they acknowledged that there is a problem with their design - "...This is the BUG (i think we could use this word) of main chip JMS583,..."They asked me to get another unit to confirm that my SSD was not damaged. Note, they did not offer to replace the unit. They asked me to return the bad one to Amazon and get a replacement. After their board failed, I had already bought a competitors board. That arrived a couple of days back and I was able to confirm that my SSD itself was NOT damaged in any way. Whew!!!!Very poor support from QNINE - I bought several of their products in the last couple of weeks - Now, I will not trust their quality and will not buy any more of their products. In any case, they charge much more for what others sell for 50% or lower.

Looking at the available USB to NVMe drive kits out there, it is clear that there are a couple/few models that various companies re-package as their own. So it's always nice to find such a model that includes a couple of extras that address the shortcomings of the original.Immediately upon opening the QNINE box, it was clear that they got a few things right. First, inside the box was a plastic "kit box", which can hold the main unit plus a screwdriver and cables. For anyone who has purchased these types of kits, one of the annoying things is that the small pieces get lost over the years, so the inclusion of a kit box is very much appreciated.The QNINE box also includes an extra USB-C (both ends) cable, addressing a shortcoming of the original kit that only includes USB-C to USB-A. And it also includes an additional screwdriver that is much higher quality than the tiny one included in the original kit. (The extra screwdriver is the one thing that can't fit into the plastic kit box.)Disassembling the unit to insert the NVMe drive was easy. Take out two screws on the end and the circuit board slides out. The main difference between attaching the NVMe drive in this unit vs. a motherboard is the screw holding down the drive to the board. Instead of fastening an attachment screw to the top of a standoff, you actually detach the standoff from the bottom, and the reattach it by slotting the board into the groove at the top of the standoff. Then you re-fasten the screw on the bottom.Upon plugging it into a USB port, the NVMe drive was immediately recognized, and the drive helpfully has a blue indicator light right next to the USB port showing that it is connected. Like any hard drive, if the drive has never been initialized, you need to go into Disk Management and initialize and format the drive before it can be used. (Windows 10 users can get to Disk Management by right-clicking the Start button and selecting Disk Management from the popup menu.)Performance seems to be just what you would expect from any USB connection. It will never have the full speed potential of a Thunderbolt 3 connection, but it does seem to perform up to what you're used to with USB devices. Perfect for an extremely portable drive that can plug into any USB port and provide up to 2TB of storage. (That's the largest NVMe drive at the present.)

(Note: I got the medium-sized one, with the air holes in the sides, that says "USB3.1 to PCI-e NVMe SSD ENCLOSURE" on it.)I'm very happy with this enclosure. It comes with a nice little clear hard plastic travel case, and both a USB-A and USB-C cable, as well as 2 high-quality screwdrivers! It takes about 2 minutes to pop an SSD in or out of the enclosure, and requires these screwdrivers, but it's very nice because one of the included screwdrivers is small enough to fit (with the enclosure and cables) in the travel case.The instructions could be a little better -- the screw that pegs down the free end of the SSD drive looks initially like it's missing, but then you realize that it's actually that gold cylinder already attached; to the board; you have to unscrew the peg, fit the SSD into the notch in it, and then screw the gold peg itself back in.I was able to get the following speeds writing to it: (MB = megaByte) 460 MB/sec using USB-C port on Dell TB16 dock 300 MB/sec using direct USB-A to side port on Dell XPS 15 9570 laptop 160 MB/sec using USB-A port on Dell TB16 dockThe read speeds are almost double that. I got about 700 MB/sec read speeds when connected to the USB-C port on my Dell TB16 dock.