2023 list (for the money and performance) external SSD and enclosure for M1 Air

[sierrablue]

I am looking for an external Thunderbolt enclosure and SSD combo proven to get speeds higher than the Samsung T7 that I recently purchased at Costco about a week ago. I thought I would get closer to 1000mbps rather than the 600mbps that I am seeing with the T7. I plugged directly into an open thunderbolt connection and also through the OWC Thunderbolt 4 dock and same result.

I have searched other topics and found that most are rather old recommendations from a year or two ago. Does anybody have any recent good results with buying a new enclosure and ssd that is faster than the 600mbps that I am currently getting on my 2020 M1 Air? I do not do anything that requires a lot of speed but I feel that, for the price, I can get something that works faster than the T7. Any suggestions? Thanks

 

[xraydoc]

The following all have TB3 or TB4 interfaces and should be much faster than 1000MB/sec:
Samsung X5
Sabrent Rocket XTRM-Q
OWC Envoy Pro FX
Fantom Extreme

 

[steve123]

A TB4 SSD enclosure (for example, ACASIS TBU405) paired with a NVMe SSD (for example WD SN850X). You will achieve read transfer rates of close to 2800 MB/s and write transfer rates close to 1800 MB/s using a MBA M1. Write rates go up to close to 2800 MB/s if using a MBP M1 Max. Avoid Samsung NVMe SSD's due to TRIM compatibility issues with macOS.

 

[FFabian]

Nothing changed since last year. Buy an Acasis TBU401 or 405, add a WD SN770, Samsung 980Pro or 850X and get fast SSD speed. The aforementioned NVME SSDs got quite a bit cheaper in the last 4 month though (down from around 200-220€ to 160€).