Accessories: 4 out of 5
By including two USB 3.1 gen 2 cables the Orico NVMe to USB adapters are above average. Mix in multiple mounting options and there is not much to dislike about the included accessories.
Read performance: 24 out 25
Thanks to its NVMe compatible JMS583 controller the read performance bottleneck is not going to be the adapter. It is going to be the narrow USB 3.1 gen 2 bus.
Write performance: 39 out of 40
As with read performance these adapters are about as fast as USB 3.1 gen 2 can get. To get higher you really will have to opt for ThunderBolt 3 based devices. Just expect to pay for the privilege of using TB3!
Warranty: 5 out of 10
A 1-year warranty it is short, arguably too short. Yes, these are portable USB adapters and are unlikely to break in such a manner that will be covered by warranty… but would it have been all that hard to make it 2 years? Especially when these devices, like all storage, have an bathtub curve for failures – in that most will happen in the first 90days then most of the rest after 3 years. We think not. Orico disagrees.
Value: 18 out of 20
Overall the value these drives is pretty darn good. For not much more than an off the shelf SATA based ‘flash drive’ buyers can not only get twice the performance, but the ability to customize their storage device to their particular needs. If you happen to have an ‘older’ NVMe drive you are replacing the value of these nifty devices is even higher. Simply put, they are cheap enough that is awfully hard to justify buying SATA to USB adapters unless all you have is spare SATA M2 drives.
Final Score: 90 / 100
With their combination of great (for its class) performance, abilities to pass TRIM and generally great aesthetics both the TCM2 and PVM2 deserve to be on your short list. Just understand that both models are targeted at slightly different demographics. So choose the one that best suits your needs.
