30-second review
Orico is a brand active in many different technology sectors, and it has supported portable storage for some time.
The M20 is a portable SSD from the new Taichi Series with speeds up to 2000MB/s. It will work with a PC, Mac, or Chromebook and can connect to either USB-A or USB-C ports.
It's also lightweight at just 59g (0.13lb), including the cable, and at only 8cm long, it easily fits in most pockets.
However, this is an active market. Crucial, Kingston, and ADATA offer similar solutions supporting USB 3.2 Gen 2x2, some of which have a 4TB capacity that the M20 doesn't.
Others come with software management tools and carry pouches, which, again, aren't features of the M20.
These ommissions would be fine if the Orico M20 were significantly cheaper. The 2 TB model sells for just $160 from Amazon (with a $20 discount). That compares strongly with the Crucial X10 Pro, roughly the same price as the Kingston XS2000 and the ADATA SE880 for 2TB.
The M20 is a basic USB SSD that can perform well if you have suitable USB ports, but it doesn't offer anything special and doesn't undercut the opposition on price.
Orico M20 Portable SSD: Pricing and availability
- How much does it cost? From $60 for 512GB model
- When is it out? Available now
- Where can you get it? Sold through online retailers, including Amazon
Depending on where you source this from, it's either called the Orico M20 or the ORICO Taichi Portable SSD, but these are the same product.
Available from Amazon, the M20 comes in three capacities: 512GB, 1TB and 2TB. At the time of writing, these cost $60, $130, and $180, but the two biggest ones currently have a $20 coupon offer.
For whatever reason, in the UK, only the 2TB model is listed on Amazon, and it costs £150, but they have no stock in the Orico store. In Europe, the 2TB drive is listed at €199,99, but with a twenty Euro coupon, the same as the USA offer.
These prices are almost identical to those offered by the Kingston XS2000 and the ADATA SE880, being similar designs. It's cheaper than the market leader, the Crucial X10 Pro, but that drive is waterproof and comes with software tools that the M20 can't match.
Overall, if this drive was $150 or came with supporting tools, it would be a more compelling purchase.
It's worth noting that Orico also has an identical-looking M10 that only supports 1000MB/s transfers with USB 3.2 Gen 2. It's cheaper, so don't confuse these thinking you have snagged a bargain.
- Value: 3 / 5
Orico M20 Portable SSD: Specs
Orico M20 Portable SSD: Design
- Metal and ABS construction
- 5-year warranty
- Dual mode cable
The M20's construction is simple but effective. The USB-C port end has a metallic cap, probably aluminium, and the rest of the exterior is black ABS plastic.
One curiosity is that the box comes with a short wrist-sized lanyard, but there is no through-hole on the M20 for this to be attached. Instead, a clear TPU bumper, like a tiny phone one, is included that the lanyard can thread.
With the bumper in place and reasonably solid construction, the M20 seems robust. However, Orico makes no claims about its resilience other than to infer some with a five-year warranty. As for IP68K/IP69, these aren't anything Orico embraces with the M20.
Quoting from the product literature included in the box, it specifically says "Please do not hit, throw, or puncture the product, and avoid dropping, squeezing or bending".
That doesn't sound massively tough, so if you are inherently clumsy, this might not be the drive for you.
The documentation also warns us 'About fever', and the author of this seems to think fever is the right word to use when describing the increase in temperature that can occur when the M20 is worked hard.
What is a useful feature is that the USB cable supports both the older USB Type-A ports and the USB-C variety. It's good to see a reasonable length of 25cm long, plainly a high-quality cable, and not something cheap.
Other than these points, there is relatively little to say about the M20. It's evidently TLC flash in an attractive enclosure with a controller that supports Gen 2x2 mode, and it comes with a cable, bumper and lanyard.
- Design: 3 / 5
Orico M20 Portable SSD: Software
- There is none
Sometimes, USB SSD makers offer only basic software tools that you must download from the company website. But Orico hasn't offered any tools, not even firmware update software.
Based on Orico's other products, it might offer a tool if it decides that the M20 needs an upgrade, but currently, you are on your own regarding software.
- Software: 1 / 5
Orico M20 Portable SSD: Performance
- Needs USB 3/2 Gen 2x2
- No hardware encryption
From a performance perspective, the Orico M20 is fine, either matching or beating the market leader in the majority of our tests. We also tested the drive with large files, and it doesn't choke if you throw a 64GB file at it since this design doesn't use DDR for caching.
It converts the TLC into a faster form to accept the write, and then when it isn't being bludgeoned with data writes, it quietly converts it back into a more efficient form and reclaims the space. This technique is used by M.2 drives all the time, and the only point it can be a drawback is when the drive is nearly full and the capacity doesn't exist for it to work well.
Where it mostly differs from the Crucial X10 Pro is support for hardware encryption, which is available on the X10 Pro but missing from the M20. You can still use BitLocker on the M20, but this is software encryption using AES-128 and not the hardware encryption that Crucial supports.
- Performance: 4 / 5
Orico M20 Portable SSD: Verdict
Several minor issues with this drive slightly take the shine off it, but there are also some limitations that we need to see companies like Orico address.
The M20's performance is comparable with all the drives we've tested in its class, but the SSD module inside is capable of much higher speeds than the 2,000MB/s that USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 can transfer.
What's annoying is that almost every new system that we review comes with USB 4.0 or Thunderbolt, but drives like the M20 don't support any faster than 1,000MB/s on those connections. Instead, they support USB 3.2 Gen 2x2, a port that made it onto remarkably few computers, and we couldn't test if we hadn't added a specific card to our test environment specifically to support it.
Without this port, a dozen cheaper alternatives, like the excellent Crucial X9 Pro, offer that speed in a more robust package.
The lack of hardware encryption is also problematic since Crucial and Kingston have this feature in their drives.
In short, the Orico M20 looks like it should be placed alongside the business favourites in this category, and its performance justifies that, but the rest of the details regrettably fall short.
Should I buy the Orico M20 Portable SSD?
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