ACASIS 40Gbps M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure, TBU 405 for M1 M2 Pro/Max, Compatible with 、USB4/USB3.2/3.1/3.0/2.0, M.2 Enclosure Support 2280/2260/2242/2230 (TBU405)

Wow! What a few weeks it has been. For some, my initial review was blunt and critical. I had a unit arrive that initially worked, albeit slowly and not as expected. Soon after, the unit stopped responding and wouldn't mount a drive. I thought this product was garbage. However, I did some very thorough research. The product I received had been used before, and I unknowingly thought it was a new product. To summarize a very long story, the prior user did not insert the SSD in correctly, damaging the connector component and cracking (a few at least) solder joints that was making it work initially, but then as heat was applied the cracks became more apparent through thermal expansion, and BAM! The unit was dead. I initially thought this was a product malfunction, but this turns out to be on Amazon's side by returning used products and placing them as new. I had a lengthy conversation with the seller, and they are working with Amazon to ensure these things don't happen again. I agreed with them, that when you buy a new product, you should expect a new product, and not something that has been used before only for Amazon to throw it back on the shelf. This has apparently increased in frequency with Amazon, and thus this places blame squarely on them. Therefore, my review is below as I returned the defective unit, and bought a brand new one that I was able to test out. Like many of you, NVMe Enclosures are not a completely new idea, but they have remarkably increased in performance in the last year or two. This is because NVMe rely on the PCIe bus which typically is attached to a motherboard, offering the very best and top speeds that the motherboard is capable of handling. When you start moving toward enclosures, they are not "directly" attached to the motherboard, and thus are limited by the cable, receiver technology, and enclosure itself. Whereas USB (and Thunderbolt, for that matter) have promised to simplify this technology, it instead has increased its complexity to confuse all of us! First, you are looking for an enclosure. No surprise you already have a 2280 (think size, 22cm by 80cm SSD "stick", and NOT a SATA stick, don't bother with those anymore) SSD that you want to use, but either don't want to put it into a computer or you have a spare one on hand. That's where these enclosures come in handy; they can utilize the SSD attached to the computer as a "mega USB thumb stick" to increase storage and a whole benefit of other factors. Now, as we discuss speeds, USB sticks are actually surprisingly slow. Even some of the best, expensive ones are only able to pump out 100-200 MB/s write speeds (reading is almost always faster and easier than write). Since you are looking for an enclosure, you should have at least a 3,500 MB/s NVMe SSD that can benefit from a fast enclosure. Simply hook this up to a computer, and you'll get fast read/write speeds. This benefits from large file transfers such as videos, or a database of something like music (I myself have about 300 GB of personal music collection, not streamed). So the usefulness of a 1TB to 2TB SSD attached to the computer helps out your storage, while also performing well for the computer to carry out tasks that is within the extra storage space you are using. Enter ACASIS Thunderbolt enclosure. You'll see that it has the (not latest, but best) Intel JHL 7440 Chipset. You want this chipset because it is capable of Thunderbolt 3 (and Thunderbolt 4 for a Mac, a bit more about that difference in a second). This chipset gives you the capability to read and translate that data on the SSD to be sent to the computer. Next, you need the proper cable. Not just any cable with USB-C connections on each end. You need a cable that is capable of transferring that data from the enclosure to the computer. Any old "charging USB-C" cable won't do, they are for charging and NOT necessarily for data transfer. The cable that comes with this unit is meant for Thunderbolt 3/4, so this cable is good (and spendy). If you need a longer one, they don't make super long ones simply because the longer cable that you use, more interference is introduced and drastically reduces the speeds. Best to keep your cables short! Once you have the SSD, the enclosure, and the cable, you can now connect it to your computer or your laptop. The best benefits will be realized by a laptop as this enclosure is easy to carry around, does not weigh much, and performs WAY BETTER than any kind of mechanical drive that you plug into a laptop. This gives you the extra storage space you are looking for. Maybe for video editing, carrying around your music or photo collection, or even a backup that will be quick to backup any files that you need. This enclosure gives you that flexibility to use at your will, and giving performance similar to another SSD that is plugged into your motherboard. I installed both a 2TB WD SN850X and a 2TB Samsung 980 PRO (both are very good SSD's with fast read/write speeds) to test out the capability of these enclosures. I used a new Mac Mini M2 Pro and used a hard drive speed test software. Speeds were about the same between both SSD's, so the enclosure is pulling the best that it can from each SSD's. Even though these SSD's are capable of over 7,000 MB/s, the limiting factor is what Thunderbolt can do, and that is a theoretical rate of 40Gbps. But I'm going to clarify some negative reviews here with some technical know-how: First, remember that speeds are theoretical bandwidth speeds, and almost never reach those speeds. Think USB 2.0 and how everyone thought it was mega-fast at 480 Mbps, but it never got close to that. Know why? Because everyone kept trying to use mechanical drives, and they simply just can't perform like an SSD could back in the day, so speeds were still seemingly slow (still way better than USB 1.1!). Second, Thunderbolt (and USB 4.0) still have to have bandwidth reserved for display output. That means that the 40Gbps capable speeds still has about 16Gbps of reserved bandwidth for display carry-through. So yes, 40Gbps would yield over 5,000 MB/s, but you're not going to get that no matter what you do. So the best you can get is about 24Gbps, which is about 3,000 MB/s and that's exactly what this unit can do. I have not seen any other enclosure that can beat the performance of this one, simply as the best chipset right now is the JHL 7440 which will cap out data transfers at about 24Gbps (surprise!). Still, 3,000 MB/s is still VERY good, and you HAVE to remember that this is not directly connected to the motherboard, so you're not going to see 7,500 MB/s transfer speeds simply because you are not directly connected to the fastest bus on the computer. External connections are never really going to be faster than internal circuitry, so stop believing that somehow, magically, you can. Just isn't reality. So with that in mind, the enclosure can get warm with TONS of data transfers (how often are you going to transfer TB's of information back and forth? Yea, not much), so the heat dissipation is good. I found out that the hottest my unit could get was about 110 degrees F after moving 4TB of data back and forth, which is not bad at all. I also keep the heat down because it sits on top of the aluminum body of the Mac Mini, which helps pull heat out of the unit. The enclosure is a well machined block of aluminum alloy, so it is capable of heat transfer if you give it a medium to do that. Air is not exactly the best conductor, so sitting on top of a towel will not dissipate as much heat as you would if you placed it on a thick, solid metal surface, or even a cold, flat desk that can help pull some heat from the unit. To be fair though, it will only get hot with a LOT of work, and even then I noticed that it cools down fairly quickly, so heat is not really an issue with this unit. Lastly, I went beyond and wired up two of these units to give a real-world demonstration of a RAID setup (Google RAID if you need to learn about it, you'll want to if you haven't heard of it, RAID can be awesome). Using the same Mac Mini, I took two SSD's and two of these ACASIS enclosures, and set them up as a RAID 0 drive using Stripe. Now, I've taken two 2TB drives and created one single 4TB drive. As one transmits info, the other is getting ready to transmit, so they both work in harmony that essentially doubles your bandwidth. Behold, my 3,000 MB/s speed tests now turned into 6,000 MB/s speeds! That's the WOW factor that is needed. Overall, for about $100, this enclosure will beat the socks off of any of those "other" $20 or $40 enclosures. The JHL 7440 chip itself is expensive, not to mention the cable that is actually capable of full data transfer is not cheap either. Hence, the price is getting something worth paying for. You think USB 3.0 speeds are fast at 5Gbps? Try transferring a 30GB file and see the difference. Personally, I used a 30GB Photos library, which is a good test because it has hundreds of thousands of files, plus a large 30GB data chunk size, that is perfect to test a transfer rate. I moved 30GB in less than 30 seconds. Yes, half a minute. You read that right. How? Because I used my internal Mac Mini SSD with speeds of 3,500 MB/s and my RAID drive capable of 6,000 MB/s, and it transferred a large 30GB file that quickly. Just. Screamin'. Fast. So, to realize the full potential of this, you need to ensure that you have the right SSD, the right enclosure (this one), and the right cable (comes included). Now you are ready to play with power! Pic 1: Speeds of the enclosure using Samsung 980 PRO Pic 2: Detailed breakdown of Thunderbolt connection, 40 Gbps Pic 3: Box unit arrived it Pic 4: Internal Mac SSD, notice the speeds of ACASIS enclosure is near internal SSD speeds! Pic 5: Buy two of these, use RAID to combine the SSD's together for a whopping 6,000 MB/s!!!!

This is an excellent NVMe enclosure. I chose the TBU405, as I feel it may have better heat dissipation than the TBU401, due to the corrugated outer casing. I honestly don't know what the difference is between the two otherwise. I have used the Samsung 980 Pro 2TB and WD Black SN 850x 2TB in the enclosure with nearly identical results on a 2023 16" M2Pro MBP with ThunderBolt 4 /USB4 ports. TEMPERATURE This enclosure gets warm. At a room temp of 21℃/70℉, (at idle) the temp of the casing is 38℃/100℉, while resting on a cork mat, (to see what temp it will idle at) which does not conduct much heat from the casing to the surface its laying on. This matters, because the only heat transfer is to ambient air around it. If I were to rest this on the MacBook Pro chassis to the right or left of the track pad or any other temp conducting surface, the temp would plummet on the ACASIS enclosure because it would transfer the heat to whatever its laying on. Any surface that readily absorbs heat from the enclosure makes an enormous difference. I don't think it's much of a concern otherwise, as NVMe SSD's can operate well up to roughly 70℃. SPEED This is about the best external solution for transferring large files. This is roughly 3x faster than nearly all NVMe external drives sold by the major SSD manufacturers due to the Thunderbolt interface. (Most of them are USB 3.x and are restricted by the 10GB/sec interface speed. You will not get max speeds on USB 3.x. Currently using with a Samsung 980 Pro 2TB with latest firmware (as recommended by ACASIS) and also tested with a WD Black SN850x 2TB (latest firmware). I thought I remember seeing ACASIS say that the latest firmware for the SN850x works with this enclosure but I don't remember where I came across that info. So take that with a grain of salt. I formatted the drive and ran some speed tests with no issue. I didn't conduct any large file transfers. Performance of these PCIe Gen 4 SSD in this enclosure wielded excellent results. I reach around 3000 MB/s on large seq. read and writes on Amorphous Diskmark. Using the included TB3 cable wielded the same results as using a brand new OWC TB4 cable. No speed issues for me with included cable. Also, no disconnects, no hiccups after transferring a little over 1TB performing backup of an old spinner. This process took around 5 hours, due to the slow conventional HD and the amount of files I transferred. This ACASIS enclosure would have been able to read/write in a minute what took the other drive over an hour to transfer. NOT KIDDING!!! FORMATTING Originally, I had formatted the Samsung 980 pro to APFS (case sensitive/Encrypted) and it wielded performance results in RND 4K QD64 Read/ lower than expected. (See Pics) (763MB vs. 1385MB) While I was somewhat disappointed in that result, I learned it was due to formatting that way. When I reformatted to just APFS, results were as expected (1385MB). Nearly double in that one metric. I thought originally that the issue might have been the SSD, not the ACASIS enclosure. Turns out it was the formatting. *Another note, is that you will not see top speeds when formatting to exFAT. It will affect your benchmarks considerably. All in all, this is an excellent solution if you need top tier performance from an external drive. I would definitely recommend. Being these Gen4 NVMe drives are capable of over 7000MB/sec I would love to see an updated enclosure. I am not sure if the bottle neck is interface speed (TB3/4 @ 40GB/sec.) or if this enclosure is using a PCIe Gen3, either way its currently the best solution for those that require as little wait time as possible using an external enclosure.

Apple charges too much to add storage. So, I got my MAC with standard 512gb of storage. I added this case and teamed it up with a Western Digital Black SN770 2TB and I couldn't be happier. External drives, including NVMe over Thunderbolt max out at 2700-2800 MBps. So there was no reason for me to buy the higher speed and more expensive NVMe storage. But with overhead, you don't want an NVMe that only gets around 3000MBps either. This was perfect. It's almost as fast as my internal storage. Internal clocks at around 3000-3100MBps read/write. This enclosure with the SN770 2TB clocks in consistently at 2750-2800MBps. Can't beat it. Some people say this enclosure, like most, run hot. Well, if you know what you're doing, it doesn't run hot. Put the thermal pad on properly and it works fine. I keep mine running even cooler by having this enclosure sitting next to my Mac Mini M2 Pro, which I have sitting on TOP of a laptop fan/cooler. When I run temps on this enclosure and the western digital SN770 NVmw, it averages around 85-88 degrees F when idling. If I let my Mac go to sleep when I walk away, the temp when I turn come out of sleep mode is around 78 degrees F. When I'm using the enclosure and SN770, the temperature rarely goes about 100 degrees F. Unless I am playing a game, (I store all my games on this drive). It might reach around 110-120 degrees F. Under the harshest conditions, maybe 130 degrees. The operating temperature of most M.2 NVMe is 0 - 70°C (32 - 185°F). So definitely no problem. This enclosure is small, so it fits nicely on the laptop fan/cooler, along with my Mac Mini M2 Pro and USB-C hub and USB-A (3.0) hubs. I got this enclosure on sale for about $95. Normally around $120-$130. I got the Western Digital SN770 2TB M.2 NVM3 for $85; normally $100-$120. Apple want $200 for an ADDITIONAL 512GB of storage. I got an additional 2TB of storage for a total of $180. And it's just as fast as the internal Mac storage. Definitely recommend this enclosure. But you have to pair it with a quality NVMe storage. Get the Western Digital SN770. Great price, great speed. No need to spend more for faster. It can't go faster. Only internal PCIe can go faster. Don't try and save $10-$20 by getting some other brand. Stick with Western Digital or Samsung.

Works great. Great speeds, but gets pretty hot. Not sure how this will affect the life of the SSD inside.

My initial enclosure was defective with constant connection and disconnection issues on day one. I tested multiple NVME drives, and ruled out drive issues. Returned first one, second one arrived and it's perfect. I get very efficient write speeds and I currently have a 4TB NVME installed without issues. Happy with the product now. Happy with Amazon as well for the return process. Have used between my TB4 hub as well as directly into my computer TB4 port, it does get warm but not overly hot. Comes with two plastic posts for securing, plastic block/blanks for taking up space for smaller drives, and 2 pieces of thermal paste. No tools required to install or swap out drives. Included cable works well, compact length but not as short as those older USB 3.0 plugs of yesteryear. Good product.

This has become my 'go to' NVMe SSD Enclosure - period. It is by far the fastest and most reliable enclosure I have ever had - and I've had a bunch of them. I am to the point of being unwilling to even try another enclosure until I see compelling proof that there is another enclosure that is at least as good. the only thing that may concern anyone who already owns a box full of SSDs might be that the Acasis enclosure only fits 2280 form factor SSDs Speed, of course, is also dependent on the SSD you have chosen but I have found that with the SSDs I typically buy I can count on speeds (read and write) of right at 2800Mbs. I typically use 2TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus (or better) or 2TB WD Black SN850 or better SSDs. Cheap "no name" brands may not be as fast or last as long as these two It is really easy to install the SSD in the enclosure. You just remove the back cover, slide the SSD into the slot, slide a "retainer" over the end of the SSD to hold it in place (no screw needed), and put the cover back on the container. One highly recommended, but not absolutely required, step is to affix some thermal tape to the SSD before putting the cover back on. The SSD WILL get hot and the thermal tape will help a lot with that. A strip of thermal tape comes with the enclosure

Didn't have the money for a 4TB Mac Mini M2 so I went cheap and figured I'd use external storage for libraries or large files. Got my Photos library whittled down so I'll be using external for video library and storage, (backed up elsewhere). I purchased a dual slot Orico hub, very nice but really struggled with the second NGFF slot, occasional disconnect, and heat. Tested with different sticks, no luck. Wanted it to be the foundation of the expansion but in the end I had to return it. I'm no expert, and there are so many variables, but based on what I can see from DriveDX and Blackmagic this looks like it might be the one. I'm leery of leaving it plugged in and just running for no reason, these enclosures don't really turn off until you shut your computer down so here's my goofy workaround: Mac Mini M2 plugged into OWC TB3 dock,(hooked into a convenient switched outlet), with the Acasis plugged into the dock. During the week I don't need much, just web and communications. When I get around to "real" work I'll switch on the OWC which will fire up the Acasis. The speeds are reduced through the hub, if it gets bad I'll just plug it in once a week to the back of the Mini. The OWC hub runs a second monitor and a bunch of things I don't need until the weekend, so not a problem turning it off. I ran BlackMagic for about 20 minutes and the composite temperature reported by DriveDX got up to 44C. The first screenshot is with 4GB file size through the OWC hub. Second is hooked direct to the back of the Mini. Big difference, will adapt if it's too slow through the hub. Case dimensions ensure that the thermal pad contacts the back of the case just enough when you seal it up. No rubber feet on it, I'll remedy that. I feel like it might be best to have this case sitting upside down so the heat from the chip controller doesn't have to travel through everything else to leave the enclosure. Bottom of case also has "ribs" to increase surface area. Nice touch with the included thermal pads: they have tabs to remove the protective plastic. Mine came with 2 pads and at least twice as many screws as I'd need. Appreciated. Short, sturdy cord which looks like TB4. Rigid, but with a little coaxing it will probably conform to where I need it to sit. I've been letting this review sit here while I flipped the enclosure over for a while and checked temps, it runs at least 1 degree C cooler when upside down!

I bought this to use with a substitute boot drive for my Mac Studio M1. I used this with a Mushkin Gamma Gen 4.0 – 8TB PCIe Gen4 x4 NVMe 1.3 – M.2 (2280). It worked great for one month, but suddenly while I was using my computer it crashed. I connected it to a different Mac and the drive was not accessible. Panic started growing in me... did the SSD kill the enclosure, or did the enclosure kill the 8TB SSD (which at the time was quite expensive). I ordered a different brand enclosure and transplanted the SSD from this ACASIS enclosure to the new one using new thermal compound (several layers to get the heat out of the SSD and bridge board). Fortunately the SSD worked in the new enclosure and has been working for 5 months. Of course ACASIS will probably come back and say "We didn't recommend using the Mushkin SSD..." but it had no issues or crashes for that first 31 days until it died. I love how it lasted just long enough that I couldn't return it to Amazon. Now I'm stuck with a $130 brick.

「MP600 PRO XT CSSD-F8000GBMP600PXT」を内蔵して使っています。8TB と正常に認識されています。このNVMEは両面実装なので、その配慮もあると、もっと良かったです。

I’m thoroughly impressed with the ACASIS 40Gbps M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure. The speed is outstanding—file transfers are incredibly fast and efficient, exactly what you’d expect from a 40Gbps-capable device. I’ve used it with several SSDs, and performance has been consistently smooth and reliable. The aluminum build is solid and professional, keeping the drive cool even during extended use. Setup was truly plug-and-play, and it worked seamlessly across my Mac and Windows devices. After 6 months of regular use, I can confidently say that I haven’t encountered a single issue. Whether for backups, large file transfers, or portable storage, this enclosure delivers top-tier performance and durability. Highly recommended for anyone who wants reliable, high-speed external SSD access.

Very good. Has been my daily driver. Using with both apple and windows laptop.

Performance is good. Works as expected. Value for money. Enclosure quality is also good.

Does what it should. Appears to be reliable and well made. I have 4 of these all with WD SN850X NVMe drives of various capacities. Maximum write speed is in the 2.6-2.8GB/s range, which appears to be about the maximum available bandwidth allocated to data transfers over Thunderbolt 3/4. Idle drives connected with the supplied TB4 cable to my 14" MacBook Pro M1 Pro are consistently at 46 degrees Celsius across the entire face of the enclosure, in an ambient environment currently 27 degrees Celsius. This suggests that heat is evenly distributed and dissipated. I once made the mistake of stacking a couple of these during use and had a drive drop out and refuse to remount until it had cooled off, so you definitely don't want to smother these. I previously used 10Gb/s USB3 enclosures with these drives but had a problem with them randomly but frequently unmounting from Finder after updating to MacOS 14 a while back. Moving from USB3 to TB resolved the problem. USB3 was OK at ~1GB/s data transfers, but TB is nearly 3x faster on a clean drive, which makes a significant difference when doing large sustained transfers hundreds of GBs and larger. I barely bother putting projects on a computer's internal storage now because it's more than fast enough to work over TB. It makes it a lot easier to move data between devices and also separates critical data from devices, should one have a failure of some sort.