Beating Apple's CRAZY SSD Prices! (featuring Qwiizlab ES40UR)

Why pay Apple £1000 or $1000 to go from 1TB of storage to 4TB, when you can do it for a third of the price? What are the pros and cons of using a USB4 NVME SSD enclosure?

I'm testing the Qwiizlab ES40UR with a Crucial P3 Plus 4TB NVME SSD, looking at performance and running a thermal test against a smaller Thunderbolt enclosure.

PLEASE SUPPORT THE CHANNEL:
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases

Qwiizlab ES40UR

Crucial P3 Plus 4TB

Samsung T7

Join this channel to get access to perks:

#ssd #qwiizlab #apple

[bryans]

Your post is spot on. I don't pay the Apple Tax for extra storage because external storage is so much more affordable, and I can live with it sometimes being slower.

[JoeTourist]

I purchased the Orico awhile ago after viewing your review and installed a 4Tb SSD in it. It is now hosting all my photos as well as a Windows 11 VM. Since both the media and catalogue are on the SSD, I can plug the Orico into either my Mac Studio when I'm at home or MacBook Pro when I'm travelling and the experience is seamlessly the same. Fast but small external drives are a great option. The Qwiizlab looks good, but the Orico is more than fast enough for my typical use.

[tractorboy]

Thanks for demonstrating that this is a viable option. It does look like a premium product, but the size made me wish Qwizlab could have just squeezed two drives in that volume. Maybe coming soon?

[tzviasegal]

I did pick up an M2MBA and stayed at the base model. For reading emails and watching videos that’s fine. I bought a similar nvme case and 2tb drive, just for installing the apps I rarely use, like Gimp and short term file storage. I don’t worry about filling up the onboard storage. And a NAS handles data storage.

[thewalabee]

Great content as usual. I have been using the Samsung T7s as my main external storage, but thinking of what you just demonstrated. You have convinced me that the external NvME drive solution is the way to go.

[bugged]

What has worked for me is a 1TB machine and network drives that I can just drop something into from my machine. I also use WireGuard so I basically have access to my network from anywhere in the world including the network drives at home. Of course limited to by the internet speed but that usually is never a blocker especially having access to 8 TB worth of drives anytime anywhere.

[RockyWaist]

ACASIS 40Gbps enclosure with fan £120 & WD 4TB SN850X £220 (best price) is a great solution.

[Aki-fv]

First of, I love your channel. Very informative and enjoyable content to watch.

I am a long time Apple user. Started out with Apple //e, every Macintosh you can think off and here I am now owning just a MacPro 2013 "Trashcan and a Macbook Pro Mid 2015. The new Macs are not for someone like me no more.

To put Apple Prices in perspective, Just bought a "As new" with original box Thinkpad P17 Xeon with Nvidia RTX5000 card, 1TB Nvme and 64GB of ram for 1300 usd. I can upgrade that machine to 128gb of memory and add another Nvme disk for total of 4tb and probably more. Ys only 300 usd more than Apple is asking for for its 3TB nvme upgrade.

[bitcoinjc]

Great video thank you. Can you please have a look at the ACASIS 40Gbps M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure with Cooling Fan, TBU 405 Pro. I see it's a little bit more expensive but the cooling fan has me very interested, compared to the product you reviewed. They have a bigger version that acts like a dock too, I am not talking about that one, just the normal enclosure with the cooling fan one.
Thanks again.

[yagoa]

I saw 4000MBs on youtube with my enclosure, but I get 3000MBs with a 5000MBs nvme drive,
what specs or PCIE version should I look for in NVME drives for thunderbolt enclosures?

[ThisOldManOfTheSea]

I can’t speak for all devices but I do know that with my iPad Pro the increase in storage size also added more cores and more ram. So, it’s not that simple. I’ll paste the specs here

Apple M4 chip
Models with 256GB or 512GB storage:
9-core CPU with 3 performance cores and 6 efficiency cores
10-core GPU
Hardware-accelerated ray tracing
16-core Neural Engine
120GB/s memory bandwidth
8GB RAM
Models with 1TB or 2TB storage:
10-core CPU with 4 performance cores and 6 efficiency cores
10-core GPU
Hardware-accelerated ray tracing
16-core Neural Engine
120GB/s memory bandwidth
16GB RAM

[regenjo]

Expected the pause for comment to be about the pronunciation of soldered

[bryanmoraski]

Having been a lover of Mac OS since I bought the first 17 inch "iMac back in the day ( which still works and is part of my collection ) and having built many pc's and a Hackintosh. Have a 5, 1 6, 1 and 2019 Mac Pro it upsets me that Apple has gone the route of soldered parts which should be easily replaceable. There's my rant ! LOL Love the channel. Thanks for the knowledge. PS iPhone 3, 4, 7, SE and15pro max and MacBook Air M1. lol

[TheMNB]

What are it's sustained xfer rates of the Qwiizlab ES40URwith 1gb+ files over say... 20 minutes?

[yoozeer]

Great content as usual. Will this work on a Thunderbolt 3 docking station connected to thunderbolt2 host via the apple tb3 to tb2 converter at 20gb/s?

[MeinDeutschkurs]

On the first hand, I disagree. Mounting, chaining, permanent storage goes differently. A NAS or RAID might be a better choice. On the second hand, I disagree again: Apple knows exactly, why they can charge that much. Especially if you need fast access to squilions of tiny files, there is no external solution.

[kenlowey]

Apple tax amazes me...yet i still buy!...no sense here

[xray]

I’ve been using External Thunderbolt enclosures similar to yours for a while now, and putting macOS, as well as all my apps and data on the external Thunderbolt drive and booting directly from that. It’s been working very well. However it’s now the case that Apple Intelligence will not work on any Mac started from an external volume. It looks like Apple is getting to stick it back to us! I am now looking at hybrid solutions booting off the Mac’s internal SSD whilst putting as many apps and as much data as I sensibly can on the external drive. However, some apps such as Microsoft 365 will only install on the internal drive. So it looks like one way or another Apple will have their wish and force users to pay more Apple tax on storage. Genuinely shameful behaviour from a company which has no shame.

[ahcc]

1000 pounds for 4tb… that is a heavy price Apple.

[goobfilmcast]

This is my big picture answer when I see posts about Apple's pricing: Without Apple's continual push forward in the consumer digital technology space, in 2024 we would still be using Motorola Flip phones, Beepers (ka-pow) and have Microsoft BoB as our sole operating system...and paying an ungodly amount of money for them. Apple hasn't artificially boosted prices upward, rather their competitors offer OVERALL less capable, inferior quality knock-offs that can be priced lower due to the corners they cut. Say what you will but Apple CREATED the modern mass market tech revolution. You simply don't become (and remain) the World's largest company by accident...you EARN it.