Well this will be an exciting post…about storage. But then it’s useful to find information about things you’re considering buying isn’t it, and I’m fortunate to get access to some decent tech, so I thought I’d share my experiences.
I’ve recently been sorting out some of my fast storage – stuff I use for video editing and the like. While I can run this directly from my NAS it’s never quite as smooth as running it from a fast SSD – and Apple’s SSD pricing is criminal, so external it is.
I now use a couple of Thunderbolt 5 enclosures and the performance – and the reliability so far – has been awesome. They are, however, expensive. So I also have some UGreen Thunderbolt 4 enclosures. These ones in fact:
UGREEN 40Gbps M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure
These units cost about 65GBP which is about 200GBP cheaper than the TB5 units, but the performance is still solid. This one has a Samsung SSD 990 EVO Plus 2TB drive in it – and the performance connected directly to my Macbook Pro M4 Max is pretty good:

By way of comparison, this is the performance in the Thunderbolt 5 Enclosure:

So far then, so very good.
The case is a little chonky – 120 x 48 x 19 mm – and it weighs about 200 grams. This is still small enough to throw in a bag when needed. It also comes with a fan for cooling – I understand it’s supposed to varey its speed, but I’ve not noticed that. It’s either on (and barely audible), or off! It’s not an issue anyway, and I’d much rather have the fan than not.
In terms of device compatibility, the unit will accept 2230, 2242, 2260, and 2280 NVMe units, which is pretty flexible.
At the cost I am very happy with them – it’s not that much more than a USB3 enclosure but they top out at 1Gbps, so I think it’s a worthy uplift in terms of performance.
Anyway, I did warn you this wouldn’t be interesting.