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Performance Results
Comparison Products
We're using MyDigitalSSD’s BPX Pro inside the Plugable enclosure. Rated at over 3GB/s read/write, the BPX Pro will have no issue saturating the adapter's 10GB/s link. We've also included two Thunderbolt 3 devices, the 1TB G-Technology G-Drive mobile Pro SSD and 1TB Patriot Evlvr. We also threw in SanDisk’s 1TB Extreme Portable SSD, which also features a USB 3.1 Gen 2 link speed but is limited to SATA performance. Finally, we included two DIY USB 3.1 Gen 1 external drives using a WD Blue SSD and HDD.
ATTO
ATTO is a simple and free application that SSD vendors commonly use to assign sequential performance specifications to their products. It also gives us insight into how the device handles different file sizes.
Compared to the normal performance of the BPX Pro, we can see that the USB interface hampers performance with small files. But, just as expected, the Plugable USBC-NVMe delivers 1GB/s of sequential throughput for both reads and writes.
CrystalDiskMark
CrystalDiskMark (CDM) is a simple and easy to use storage benchmarking tool.
Plugable’s USBC-NVMe enclosure achieved a little over 900/953 MB/s of sequential read/write speed at QD 32, which is similar to the M2X’s performance.
At QD1, however, performance fell to 500/475 MB/s read/write. The Plugable's 4K random performance hit 24/39 MB/s, which is, again, very similar to the M2X enclosure.
Transfer Rates – DiskBench
DiskBench is a storage benchmarking tool that allows us to test the transfer or copy performance of a storage device with real data. We test external drives with three file transfers that consist of 25GB of photos (10GB of iPhone jpgs and 15GB of RAW photos from a Canon 6D), 50GB of movies, and 25GB of documents. First, we transfer each folder from a 1TB NVMe SSD to the external device; then we follow up by reading a 3.7GB 7-zip file and a 15GB movie back from the device.
The Plugable enclosure is similar to the M2X, but it offers a clear advantage over standard USB enclosures and even SATA-based external SSDs. Thunderbolt 3 is still king, however. With performance that is more than double during the photo and documents transfers, they are the fastest devices on the market. But they do come with a healthy premium.
Trace Testing – PCMark 8 Storage Test 2.0
PCMark 8 is a trace-based benchmark that uses Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, World of Warcraft, and Battlefield 3 to measure the performance of storage devices in real-world scenarios.
In PCMark 8, Thunderbolt 3 proves to be the fastest, but the little Plugable enclosure paired with a BPX Pro still did well. Overall, with a total score of 5008 points and an average bandwidth of 317MB/s, it easily tops the performance of the SATA-based externals.
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