Review on UGREEN External Drive Enclosure 2 5Inch by Adam Shuler

Overall this case is well made, easy to install and delivers the expected speed (except Mac, see below). Pros: - Good materials: aluminum, soft-touch plastic - Easy to install (no tools required) - Meets expected speeds, mostly Cons: - A bit thick. I wish the interior wasn't covered in plastic. If there was only aluminum in contact with the SSD, it would act as a heat sink and save space. Mac speed tests were either very slow or fast (not sure if this is due to the drive or Mac OS). Speed test: I tested the speed on computers running Windows 10 and Mac OS 11.4 Big Sur. A 120 GB Kingston UV400 SSD with a read speed of up to 550 MB/s and a write speed of 350 MB/s is installed. I formatted the hard drive with exFAT. I used CrystalDiskMark on Windows and AmorphousDiskMark on Mac. I didn't have a USB-C port on my Windows desktop, but I do have a USB 3.1 Type A port and I tested it with a CA 3.1 Gen 2 cable. Windows had 525 MB/s reading and 281MB/s. with the recording. When testing on a Mac, my initial speed test was around 35 MB/s. Reading about the included USB-C cable, I knew immediately something was wrong. After unplugging the Thunderbolt dock and testing again, I was able to read 368MB/s and write 346MB/s. However, subsequent testing and real-world testing with rsync has shown that testing drops to 30MB/s. I also tested other CC cables including a Thunderbolt 3 cable. Switching to a CA cable through my CalDigit dock brought the speed back to 300 seconds. I'm not exactly sure what's going on, but inconsistencies are hard to fix and find a single culprit. This could explain why some reviewers see great speed on Mac OS while others don't. In general I am satisfied with the device, provided that I can get a normal speed.