Acasis TBU405Air Thunderbolt 3 NVME M.2 drive enclosure

Thunderbolt 3 NVME enclosure

The Acasis TBU405Air is a compact Thunderbolt 3 NVME M.2 enclosure designed for users who need fast external storage on laptops or desktops with Thunderbolt 3, Thunderbolt 4 or USB4 ports. It accepts single-sided and double-sided 2280 drives and requires no tools for installation. The aluminium shell includes a built-in cooling fan and thermal pads to manage drive temperature during sustained workloads.

8TB capacity with active cooling

Each bay supports drives up to 8TB, giving ample headroom for large media libraries, project files or system backups. In testing with a Samsung 980 EVO Plus on a MacBook Pro the enclosure reached sequential reads of 2805MB/s and writes of 2734MB/s, though actual throughput varies with the host system and the drive installed. The integrated fan and corrugated aluminium body help maintain those speeds under load without thermal throttling.

Upgrade from slower USB enclosures

This unit replaces USB 3.2, 3.1, 3.0 or 2.0 enclosures that cannot saturate modern NVME drives, and it is not compatible with those older USB interfaces. The jump is worthwhile when the host provides Thunderbolt 3, Thunderbolt 4 or USB4 and the workflow demands sustained transfer rates above what USB 3.x can deliver. Buyers whose computers only offer USB-A or USB-C without Thunderbolt or USB4 should choose a different model.