Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsNot power efficient, could be better. but optimized for apple m1
Reviewed in Canada on March 15, 2022
I moved to this enclosure for my Samsung 970 Pro simply because my old jmicron controller enclosure was consuming too much power and also was performing poorly on the 14 inch macbook pro.
So i found this because it had 4.7 stars out of 5.
On the old one, only one cable worked with it because it consumed too much power. On all windows systems it would keep cutting out after X number of GB and i found the reason that the controller was drawing too much power and there was no power limiter in place.
So, I moved to this enclosure, knowing there were problems with optimization on Apple Silicon.
There is already a heat sink provided in the top of the case so its not very hot to the touch. I installed it and connected the ssd to my computer. It booted up, as normal.
DO NOTE that you have to initialize the disk if its the first time using the disk itself.
I booted up a Blackmagic speed test and tried it, and I was stunned when I saw 900MB/s read and write. I knew something's up because there have notoriously been problems with the speed of the external ssds in the M1 family.
So, I tried transferring an actual file, because I knew that it was the way to go. It was the way to get the fastest disk speed on Mac.
To my surprise, it was actually writing at 1.06 GB a second. GB not MB
1.06 * 1024 = 1085.44MB/s
And read was maxed out at 1034.24MB/s.
This is stuff i usually saw on Intel macs. And here I am, being able to replicate the success with apple silicon.
Clearly, Sabrent has optimized this controller for M1 family. I was surprised they put this in mind when making this enclosure.
Also, it is compatible with M.2 SATA SSD as well! Not just NVME.
HOWEVER, there is a problem: some android smartphones with USB 3 ports will NOT push enough power to detect this SSD. This is a problem I came across when trying to plug the ssd into my phone, Samsung Galaxy S20 FE. Keep this in mind, you will need a USB C hub with a USB C Charging passthrough to allow the ssd to work on android phones with USB 3 ports.
3 stars for this reason. Would have been 5 stars if it worked with phone without external power.