Until now I was a cloud storage, NAS and USB drive kind of guy. When I saw this Dockcase enclosure for NVMe SSD on kickstarter a year ago, I was sceptical if the screen was really necessary over other regular enclosures. Then came the realization that external NVMe enclosures with 10Gbps up to 40Gbps would outperform all other method of file transfer and would substantially improve my life - so I caved and got 2 of them.
Pricing & Specs
In review:
- Original M.2 2230 Enclosure↗
- Price: $49.99 (USD) / £59.99 (GBP)
- Photography Edition↗ with a 1/4-inch screw hole for mounting
- Price: $69.99 (USD) / £75.99 (GBP)
I assume the $20 extra for the photography edition is there since it targets a more professional clientele. Also the markup here in the UK seems steep!
Everything Included in the Box
Other than a compatible 2230 SSD, everything needed was in the box.
- The 2230 enclosure
- A 30cm (1ft) 10 Gbps USB-C cable
- A wrist lanyard
- A spare screw
- A small screwdriver
- A manual in 6 languages
Easy setup and Solid Build
The enclosure, with its aluminium case, feels solid and sits in the palm of your hand. The small 1.33" IPS-LCD display at front boasts an impressive resolution of 240x240px. The setup took me less then 5 minutes. A screw to open the back and another to secure the NVMe drive once plugged in. Pop the back back on and you're done.
There is a large capacitor inside. I assume this is what allows it to have 3 seconds of power loss protection by charging the chip and using it as a battery. This should prevent corruption of the SSD when accidentally unplugging the cable.
Performance up to Expectations
The UI gives a ton of useful information. On the main screen you can view data on the capacity, health, temperature of the SSD and the type of USB connection made with your host device. While transfering data, you will also get the transfer speeds. With a single button you can navigate and set your drive as read only, rotate the screen, graph temperature or voltage metrics or flash a new firmware.
Using the simple open source CrystalDiskMark↗ benchmarking software, I ran a few tests and the results were promising!
Making sure I was using a USB-C 3.2 port on my laptop, I got up to 1,008 MB/s (8,069 Mbps) read and 990 MB/s (7,922 Mbps) write. Considering that the Crucial NVMe is rated for 7,100 MB/s (56,800 Mbps) in reading, the 10 Gbps USB connection is not enough to handle all of its potential.
You can now get USB 4.0 NVMe enclosures rated for 40Gbps, so it would be nice to see Dockcase iterating on their enclosure and improving on their tech.
My Thoughts
I’m planning to use the photography edition as a storage option with my phone for shooting video. With fast transfer speeds, moving big video files won’t be a hassle. This is only if Google can fix their latest Android 14 file API changes↗ and allow me to write it. Unfortunately my Sony A7C mirrorless camera cannot reccord directly on an external device. You need to use HDMI with an external recorder to do so.
I might set it up with Linux on the original edition of the 2230 enclosure, turning it into a portable OS I can boot up on different devices when needed. It seems better than Linux on a USB drive and I can then play with different distributions.