Pros: - Has worked with every NVME stick I've tried - Cloning feature does work as with previous sector-by-sector offerings - Metal construction at least means it won't melt itself - modular cabling is a plus for storage and deployment - USB 3.1 gen 2 speeds scream. If you need ad-hoc access an NVME or clone it, works great

Cons: - Pricey, but at the time there were no other affordable options for a 2x USB-to-NVME - Runs HOT. Like I mean if you clone, say, a 2TB NVME, it'll take like 30 mins, but don't you dare touch it with your bare hands until you give it time to cool off. In fact, I'd even recommend aiming a desk fan at this thing during heavy use or cloning. Do NOT set it up on something easily melt-able or you're gonna have a bad time. - The USB controller in this unit is NOT pass-thru in the sense that Samsung Migration will see your NVME drives but fail due to 'unknown errors', and Magician won't fully 'see' any drives attached to it (as of Migration 4.0 and Magician 6.3.1). AFAIK there's no way to work around this. However Windows, etc will see the drive fine. - Windows seemed to lag periodically when copying data back / forth (due to controller time?) but wasn't too bad; using a PE environment tool (such as cloning via AOMEI partition assistant, Macrium, etc) however worked 100% fine outside of the OS / no perceivable lags.

Overall Review: - Sector-by-Sector cloning works as you'd expect, but make sure your SSD firmware is updated or you may still get unacceptable results or odd errors - I was unable to 100% migrate my Samsung 970 Evo to a 980 Pro using sector clone with this (data copied fine but boot sector was borked). cloning drives for simple usb data access works fine. Sector-by-sector copy on a Bitlocked drive worked ok. - Seriously, get a little fan just to use for this thing. or set it up inside a mini-fridge. Not even kidding.

Pros: Will fit any non-keypad keyboard, installation is simple, materials included

Cons: Larger boards with right-side keypad may not fit - make sure to measure Absolutely no room for a mouse.

Overall Review: They really could have included a slide-out piece of wood / plastic for a mouse, in which case there is enough room to store the mouse while not being used in the tray as is. Alternative may be offering a larger tray option.

Pros: - 8 Bays with option to expand to max of 18 supports a lot of SMB or enthusiast use cases - 8GB included memory is ok I suppose ;) upgrading ram is a lot easier than the 1815+ or before due to better placement of the mobo - Ability to add NVME for cache and 10GB NICs for expansion has been sorely needed - Same great usability of DSM - Well-supported 3rd party package lines - usability of basically whatever SATA drive you put in it along with any desired RAID you want to use - Same drive trays as its predecessors - Did I mention a lot of functionality? If you can think of it, you can probably do it with a Synology - Ryzen CPU vs older Intels in previous units is a big difference; if you owned, say, an 1815+ or earlier you'll see a radical difference in overall performance

Cons: - Pricey, but Synology stuff is going to be; this isn't so much a con as a barrier to entry; Synology units are pretty solid and well-supported, but you need $1k for this BEFORE you buy any drives for it - Warranty should really be for 5 years, but you get what you get - Only a limited # of supported PCI-E NICs for the expansion bay will actually work (as of this writing), so you can't put that cheap quad 10GB SFP+ nic in and expect it to work :(

Overall Review: - 3-year warranty is OK, would be nice to have a longer one, but you can choose that at purchase time from Square, etc. - Synology community is pretty knowledgeable, so if you're exploring what you can do with this thing, there's someone out there that's done it and documented it. - This is my 3rd 5+ bay synology, have had great luck with them so far. As a Plex MS / backup dump / file share, can't ask for much more - If you're going with SHR-2, do yourself a favor and throw in a hot spare anyway; your raid's only as good as the quality of your drives (I've mostly used WD Reds with these with 1x expansion unit) - Make sure to keep these clean; fans will cool unit well, but it's easier with these units than other NAS / Servers for dust / hair to accumulate near the mobo. Get an air pump to use now and then or a can of compressed air now and then.

Pros: - Speeds check out, drivers not an issue - Will charge most usb devices fine - housing is durable, metal does dissipate heat well

Cons: - Similarly-priced hubs can handle 2-3 display ports, would have been nice to have at least 2 - No braided or modular connector cable (if cable is damaged, it may be kaput) - No ability to hide or fold connector cable inside shell (would be nice)

Overall Review: - There are some other docks with more ports / features out there for a similar price, but this one is still handy

Pros: - 5-year warranty / 1200TBW for the 2TB version, same as previous - Seems to run a few degrees cooler in general than the 970 Evo this replaced

Cons: - It's expensive, but you already knew that - Failing to update the firmware can lead to annoying consequences (read overall), though this has been true of samsung drives before - Runs hot overall, but pretty much any NVME drive will. If you're using a performance laptop, consider additional cooling measures / cooling stands if you haven't already

Overall Review: - As of this review I'm using this in an ASUS RoG laptop that only supports PCIE Gen 3 x4 so I can't fully get the Gen 4 speeds, but this is partially a future-proof purchase for me. If you don't have a Gen 4 capable laptop / motherboard you'll only get speeds similar to the 970 series (which are still great) but not necessarily worth the price of a 980. It's fully backwards-compatible with Gen 3 though. - As with any Samsung NVME drive make sure to get updated Samsung NVME drivers from their site; Intel RST will fail to get any kind of performance out of them, and the default MS drivers often do not include the Samsung drivers (as of this writing version 3.3) - Had a super-annoying time trying to use the Samsung migration tool (among other tools) to migrate from my 970 Evo until I realized I needed to update the firmware 3B2QGXA7 (boot sector and weird disk errors). After updating, a sector-by-sector clone with bitlocker enabled worked ok as well (it worked ok before to read the drive as well, just with a messed-up boot sector). - Other users reported serious performance drop after some time with previous firmware: I've not seen that myself at all, but I'm using more or less a standard office / gaming laptop with over-provisioning; no hardware raid.

Pros: - Does what it says, nothing too fancy - You're not going to need a driver for Windows at least - activity LED on USB end is nice to have

Cons: - A bit pricey perhaps

Overall Review: If you're using a USB-to-Serial cable, you probably don't care about speed because it's not like a serial connection is going to get anywhere close to even USB speeds. But I've used several USB-to-Serial cables before; this does what the rest of them do, save that the braided cord construction and led activity are nice to have, and as with Prolific's previous interfaces, this will work on just about anything w/o the need for drivers. I use them most often for managed switch configs, and this + Tera Term is FAR less setup nonsense than what you may have had to do in previous years. You might still need a null modem adapter in addition for super-old serial connections that require it, but this cable should do whatever you need for anything made in the last 12 years or so.