Review: Orico 4-bay SSD USB4 DAS enclosure (8848u4)
Review unit provided by Orico
The Orico 8848U4 is a 4-bay NVMe SSD DAS USB4 enclosure. Price at the time of review is USD 299 but it's almost USD 100 lower on Amazon.
This is Direct Attached Storage. Main selling points would be the large storage capacity of 32TB (with 4 x 8TB SSDs which are not included), beautiful design, solid build quality, and there's a cooling fan.
The transfer speed isn't quite USB4 though from what I've measured, but it's still fast enough for 4K video editing.
Things included
- Orico 8848U4 enclosure
- 1m USB-C 40Gbps cable
- Power adapter 36W
- Screws and nut
- Screw driver
- User manual
The braided USB-C cable looks durable.
Plug for the power adapter may vary depending on location. The power adapter allows for swapping of plugs.
Specifications
There are actually several models from the 8848 series of storage enclosure. You can choose the one that best suits your workflow.
| Specification | 8848RC3 | 8858RC3 | 8848U4 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maximum Capacity | 32TB (Single bay 22TB) | 40TB (Single bay 22TB) | 32TB (Single bay 22TB) |
| Transfer Speed | 10Gbps | 10Gbps | 40Gbps (Single bay 10Gbps) |
| Compatibility | 2.5’’ HDD/SSD, M.2 SATA + mSATA | 2.5’’ HDD/SSD, M.2 SATA + mSATA | M.2 NVME |
| Interface Extension | / | USB-A 10Gbps, USB-C 10Gbps, SD/TF Card Slot 3.0 | / |
| RAID | Support | Support | Software RAID only |
| Cooling Method | Silent Fan Cooling | Silent Fan Cooling | Silent Fan Cooling |
| Daisy Chain | / | Support | / |
| Power Supply | 12V4A | 12V5A | 12V3A |
| Supported Systems | Windows, Linux, Mac OS, Android, iOS, HarmonyOS | Windows, Linux, Mac OS, Android, iOS, HarmonyOS | Windows, Linux, Mac OS, Android, iOS, HarmonyOS |
Design
Design of this SSD enclosure looks good and feels premium. The body is made with aluminium alloy with a plastic back. Dimensions are 16.7 x 12 x 10cm. Weight is not listed on the product page but it's heavy since it's made with mostly metal.
The back has one fan, power button, USB-C port and the power port.
Fan noise is not audible unless your ear is beside the fan.
Bottom has four big rubber feet.
Front has four bays and status lights for each bay.
To open and remove the bay, just pull the latch to the left, and the handle will pop forward.
This SSD enclosure accepts four M.2 NVMe SSDs for a total capacity of 32TB storage.
The interface accept is the M key and B&M key.
You can use different lengths of SSDs.
To install the SSD, you use the nut to hold down the SSD, then screw in from beneath the tray.
All the SSD drives will appear separately.
Transfer speed
The advertised transfer speed is USB 4, compatible with Thunderbolt 3 and 4. So that's around 40Gbps in theory. Each bay however has a limit of only 10Gbps (1.2GB/s).
I tested the enclosure with my M1 Mac Mini and M2 Pro Macbook Pro with Thunderbolt 4 ports and below are the results.
The read and write speed for a single drive is around 700 - 800 MB/s.
I even tested with a gen 5 SSD that can reach 10GB/s write and 14GB/s read but in this enclosure, the speed is below 800 MB/s. In other words, you can use gen 3 or gen 4 SSDs depending on affordability of those drives.
The transfer speed is fast enough for 4K video editing but not as fast as advertised. Blackmagic Disk Speed Test shows red crosses at 4320p60.
This enclosure does not support hardware RAID but can be used with software RAID. I created a RAID 0 using the RAID Assistant of Disk Utility from MacOS and below are the test results.
Write speed is around 1.2 to 1.4GB/s and read speed is 2.7GB/s. RAID 0 is able to get me much faster transfer speed but I lose out on storage capacity. So how you want to configure the four drives really depends on your workflow.
For me the main selling point would be storage capacity. The transfer speed is fast but not spectacular but that's to be expected because real world usage rarely match lab tests.
Availabilty
The Orico 8848U4 can be purchased from Orico's online store or Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | ES | IT | JP)
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