The plug-and-play enclosure will set you back just over $100, but it gets the job done with the promise of a two-year warranty and a solid high quality metal chassis. We test the claimed 1000 MB/s transfer rate to see just how close the enclosure can get to this maximum.
Much like how there are enclosures to turn internal 2.5-inch SATA III drives into portable USB drives, the StarTech M2E1BMU31C enclosure turns an internal M.2 NVMe drive into a portable USB drive. NVMe SSDs are becoming increasingly common on PCs and an enclosure would be a quick and easy way to reuse an old NVMe drive.
More details on the StarTech enclosure, including its dimensions and specifications, can be found on the official product page here.
The 2 TB HP EX950 has sequential read and write rates of over 2000 MB/s each which should be perfect for testing the claimed 1000 MB/s transfer rate of the StarTech enclosure. Once installed and plugged into our Asus Zephyrus G14, we ran our usual benchmarks as shown below to reveal real-world sequential transfer rates in the 800 MB/s to 1000 MB/s range. Results are similar to what we observed on the HP P700 SSD which also utilizes the same USB Type-C 3.1 10 Gbps connection.
NVMe SSDs are notoriously warm, however, so expect the metal surface to quickly heat up. Ventilation holes along the sides of the enclosure help to dissipate heat, but we would have loved to see heat sinks especially since StarTech products are high-end and somewhat pricey. A USB Type-C to Type-A adapter would have also been useful in the packaging for connecting to PCs with no USB Type-C ports.
There's not much else to complain about other than what we've just mentioned. If you want a well-made plug-and-play M.2 NVMe enclosure from a trusted source with two-year standard warranty, then the StarTech M2E1BMU31C should fit the bill. Much cheaper alternatives can be found on eBay or Amazon albeit these can certainly be a gamble in terms of compatibility and longevity.
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