Small Aluminum SSD Enclosure Has Great Performance with Crucial P1
Review by Erik Vlietinck
The USB 3.1 Gen 2 Tool-Free NVMe SSD Enclosure from Plugable lets you quickly switch between SSDs. We tested it with a Crucial P1 1TB 3D NAND NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD.
The Crucial P1 delivers sequential read/write speeds up to 2,000 MB/s and 1,700 MB/s. On my machine, the maximum throughput of the Crucial P1 stranded at a respectable 1,700 MB/s read and 993 MB/s write speed; however, the enclosure I used to test the maximum throughput was a Thunderbolt 3 device.
The Plugable USB 3.1 Gen 2 NVMe SSD Enclosure is very small, made of black anodized aluminum, with the Plugable logo discreetly placed on top and a USB-C type port on the side. The opposite side is home to a spring-loaded lock. Both top and bottom have cooling ribs. The whole thing is a centimeter or so longer than Apple’s Magic Mouse and about half as large. The Crucial P1 was an exact fit.
Inside the enclosure, you’ll find a rubber peg with a notch. The SSD’s edge fits in the notch so it sits tightly. The Plugable NVMe enclosure’s design allows for easy switching of NVMe SSDs, although I can’t tell what the effect would be if you did that a number of times a week.
Plugable ships the enclosure with a few silicon bumpers to secure shorter NVMe SSDs. In addition, the box also contains a few extra pegs, and the bottom plate inside has holes in different locations to accept them, also to fit shorter SSDs.
As for performance, the speed of the Crucial P1 in the Plugable enclosure wasn’t as high as with Thunderbolt 3, but it was still considerable at 600 MB/s write and 850 MB/s read speed. The unit does get warm when copying a lot of files to it, so I think you shouldn’t use it to copy gigantic numbers of files in one move. ■
