Nearly all-metal with a screen, this is the Dockcase MagSafe M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure Review

The eagle-eyed among you may recall Dockcase featuring in one of my recent reviews of a popular touch screen-enabled dock/card reader. Well, I've been testing the latest upcoming product, an M.2 NVMe enclosure, for the last week or two, which comes with some unique features that may appeal most to those who film and record on their phones a lot, or simply want fast and reliable storage in a super portable form factor.

The enclosure will be available via Kickstarter for a month starting the 9th of October 2024, so be sure to keep an eye on the preview page and click to be notified when the campaign goes live if something like this is looks interesting.

Now, let's take a closer look!

Specifications

Unboxing

The review sample came as a beta, but I've been assured by Dockcase that the retail version is essentially the same. I am happy to say that even though it's labelled as beta, everything feels like a polished and complete package.

In the box is a lanyard, a Philips head screwdriver, a spare screw, a MagSafe metal ring with 3M tape on one side and a short Type-C to Type-C cable compatible with USB PD3.0 100W and 10Gbps data transfer.

The enclosure itself is solidly constructed bearing a tempered glass front fascia. There is no touch screen here, just a display that shows you active info.

A single button on the side switches between screens and allows configuration changes by means of quick and long presses, which I found to be intuitive.

Taking a closer look inside, everything is neatly packed. The 2230 to 2242 adapter is included if you are installing a shorter NVMe drive, and with a 10Gbpsmax bandwidth supported, this does limit the capability of the installed SSD to a theoretical 1.25GB/s transfer rates.

The installed SSD used for this review is an SK Hynix BC711 128GB, and I'll get into performance results shortly.

Features

A 240x240 pixel LCD displays dynamic information, from the current USB mode to the active transfer speeds and drive temperature.

A long press and hold of the side button cycles through the info and setting screen options, letting go on one of the headings enters that screen:

Various options can be configured from sleep mode timeout, SSD read-only mode, a short press of the button cycles down each option, and a long press changes the option—You begin to see how navigation in this single-button way works now, I bet:

There is also a mode where you can update the firmware or do other stuff, which is currently undocumented. The final long press menu option takes you to this screen:

These are all rather useful features, not something you find on other SSD enclosures. Being able to see the SSD health, data written and other info without having to plug it into a PC and run CrystalDiskInfo is a time saver.

You can plug in any USB power source which brings the screen to life and then displays said info. If you allow the capacitor inside to charge up sufficiently, then unplugging won't cause data loss on the SSD, as this is the power loss prevention safeguard Dockcase has implemented.

The full charge-up process takes about 20-30 seconds and provides 3 seconds of power loss protection.

Plugging it into my Galaxy S24 Ultra and making use of the magnetic system on the back was possible even without using the MagSafe ring. I don't think the S24 Ultra is MagSafe compliant, but the magnetic hold is strong enough to keep the enclosure in place, though not as strong as using the ring, of course.

The only issue I have here is that just one ring is included in the box. So, if you are using the enclosure with multiple devices, then you may well need multiple rings. Dockcase might offer additional rings in the Kickstarter campaign, but we will have to see it come the 9th of October to find out.

Connecting to an Android device and using a file manager app is a convenient way to copy phone media/data onto an SSD like this. The data rate here is only 5Gbps, and as far as I know, no phone currently supports faster protocols. Still, this is good enough to get 625MB/s transfer rates, which, for example, is more than enough to write 4K ProRes recordings from an iPhone since we can safely estimate what is needed at 4K Pro Res HQ at 60fps, which is ~1768Mbps (221MB/s), and as you will see in the benchmark results later, the enclosure is more than capable of maxing out even a basic 128GB NVMe SSD thanks to the 10Gbps bandwidth available.

Strangely, even though the specs state USB 3.2 support, I was unable to get the display to show a USB 3.2 connection, only USB 3.1, even connecting it directly to my PC's USB-C port on the back of the motherboard and using a certified 3.2 Gen 2x2 20Gbps cable. Not that this matters much since USB 3.1 Gen 2 is still 10Gbps, and for all intents and purposes, 3.2 Gen 2 and 3.1 Gen 2 are the same thing. Gen 1 is where you only get up to 5Gbps, and it is USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 where the bandwidth doubles to 20Gbps, confused yet? Thank you, USB-IF!

All the SSD information matches what CrystalDiskINfo reports, no tomfoolery going on here. Some may raise an eyebrow at the temperature, but this is quite normal for an NVMe, especially one cramped in a tiny enclosure.

Another neat feature is double-clicking the button to rotate the screen orientation, though if you do this by accident, then you must cycle back to the desired orientation. An auto rotation option in the settings here would have been the best method, adding a orientation sensor must be simple enough.

Performance

There really isn't anything complex to do to test out a drive enclosure, CrystalDiskMark covers the controlled transfer speeds, whilst Windows file Explorer covers the real-world numbers that most people will see.

Let's start with CrystalDiskMark with the enclosure plugged into my PC's USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 port at 10Gbps:

These results are almost exactly what is rated for the BC711 SSD, which is great to see. While it is not capable of maxing out the full 1250MB/s of the 10Gbps USB connection, there's room to spare should a faster SSD be installed—not that 1GB/s is exactly slow.

However, copying a 20GB test file over using Windows 11's File Explorer showed something interesting and expected:

The write process starts off fast and hovers around the 625MB/s marl then about halfway in, slows to a bit over 200MB/s. I mentioned that this is expected due to the SSD being used here, which runs out of buffer during a large file transfer, resulting in speed throttling. Faster and more modern SSDs won't have as big an issue in this area, and a 20GB file transfer to the SSD is rather extreme for the means of stress testing both enclosure and SSD.

Moving the test file back to the desktop from the SSD does not see any issues, though, since reading off an SSD is always much faster and no buffer issues are ever encountered, it is still a bit slower than the controlled measurement shown by CrystalDiskMark and reflects a more real-world figure:

Final words

Other than a few mishaps with the USB cable connecting to the port on the enclosure (a little loose maybe), I found no real problems with any aspect of this device.

The performance is excellent, the scope of features covers everything you may want in a smart SSD enclosure, and the display is genuinely useful.

The Aluminium housing does get quite hot, but this is a good thing, as NVMe drives, especially when writing to them consistently, get very hot, and the metal acting as a heatsink seems to help keep the operating temperature of the drive consistent.

At $79.99, the price is quite high for an enclosure that supports only up to 2242 format drives, but it is well engineered, and the features are nicely implemented. It feels like a premium piece of kit, if it was coloured white, it could be mistaken for something made by Apple.

Hopefully, Dockcase investigate the slight port wiggle observations I mentioned above and include another longer USB cable, as the one included is only suitable for portable usage. A more pliable cable would not go amiss either for those using it via a phone or tablet, as the included one is quite stiff and longer than desirable for phone use.

The marketing stock image above shows a flatter, bendy cable that looks about perfect for this sort of use, so it would be great to see one of these included in the retail version box.