‘Tinkering Review’ — I Recently Picked Up Another Great-Value Find Under RMB 200…
Translated from the Chinese original.
Why I Bought It
In the end, my wallet just isn’t thick enough. My MacBook Pro has 256GB of storage, and I often need to store and transfer relatively large files. Flash drives of a few dozen gigabytes no longer meet my needs. Right around the 618 shopping festival, I happened to get a WD SN550 SSD, and because it uses an M.2 interface, its read and write speeds are much higher, offering good value for money.
M.2 SSDs aren’t only for computers; they can also be installed in an M.2 enclosure to DIY a high-speed, high-performance portable drive.
It’s easy to carry and keeps your data safe, so I ended up choosing this ORICO NVMe M.2 portable drive enclosure. Let’s see how it performs…
Design Overview
ORICO’s boxes have always used a white-and-blue color scheme, and the exterior is all plastic. To be honest, it feels very cheap and doesn’t seem capable of protecting the SSD.
The included accessories are a manual, two screws, a screwdriver, a thermal silicone pad, and two cables.
One is a USB-C-to-USB-A cable with transfer speeds of up to 5Gbps; the other is a USB-C-to-USB-C cable with transfer speeds of up to 10Gbps.
It uses a fully transparent design, giving it a strong tech feel, a bit like the see-through Xiaomi Mi 8 Explorer Edition.
You can see the inside directly through the shell; the chip circuitry is fully visible—pretty awesome!
Taking out the PCB reveals a JMicron JMS583 controller solution, with a maximum transfer rate of 10Gbps. It also adds perforated copper heat-dissipation strips to both sides of the PCB for rapid cooling.
The enclosure uses a USB-C interface. Compared with an ordinary USB interface, it can provide higher transfer efficiency, which is a definite plus.
Comparing the ORICO M.2 enclosure with the Acasis aluminum version I had earlier, I found this “little thing” quite refined. It measures only 108 x 34 x 11.5mm and weighs about 32 g.
It’s much easier to carry around and slips into a pocket with ease.
When it arrived, I assumed there would be screws or something, but a gentle push on the latch opens the enclosure. Disassembly and installation are easy, though the risk factor rises considerably.
Using It
I roughly tested the performance of two portable drives, using a USB-C-to-USB-C connection to copy a file just over 9GB.
The read speed was around 528MB/s, while write speed settled at around 534MB/s; not much different from Acasis.
“ORICO”
“Acasis”
Switching to Disk Speed Test, the maximum read speed reached 887.6MB/s and the maximum write speed reached 435.3MB/s. The results are respectable.
Conclusion
The performance tests above show that this ORICO portable drive enclosure can still bring out the performance of an M.2 drive. It is average at best, but convenient to carry; you still need to use it carefully.
The acrylic shell does provide obvious insulation, but I’m still not entirely reassured about its protection. The RMB 168 price tag is indeed not cheap, but I do like the Explorer Edition–style transparent look!