Mailiya 2.5in SATA III 3 to M.2 NGFF SSD Connector Converter Adapter Card with SATA Data and Power Combo Cable - Support M.2 NGFF SATA 2280, 2260, 2242, 2230

PREFACEPlease note that this company is one that chooses to lump all of their products on to one page, resulting in a meaningless overall review count and star rating. To be clear then of the 7 products listed here the one I am reviewing is the M.2 NGFF SSD to 2.5” SATA III adapter frame. It is a new product and there are only a couple of valid reviews for it as of today (most of the others are for multiport USB expansion cards). To avoid confusion, when you are reading reviews on this page always read the tiny fine print in the title of the review labeled (oddly enough) as “Color”.WHAT IT ISThis adapter allows you to mount a NGFF 2.5 SSD card (essentially a solid-state hard drive designed for notebook computers) in frame so it will fit in a 2.5” SATA III mount. You might need to do that for older laptop computers or if you wish to mount a NGFF M.2 SSD card in a desktop computer.WHY THIS BRANDThere are dozens of similar cards available ranging from under 10 bucks to about 40 bucks but choosing one isn’t so easy. While most of them do essentially the same thing there are two major differences. One difference is that some are open-frame like this one and another style is a closed box enclosure. I chose the open-frame design to allow maximum air circulation around the SSD card and also for minimum additional weight when being used in a legacy laptop computer. The other big difference is that the connector end of M.2 cards are not all the same. There are B connectors, M connectors and B+M connectors. The Mailiya adapter is compatible with all B Key and B+M keys as long as they are SATA cards (not PCIe NVMe or PCIe AHCI NGFF). Many of the look-alike adapters are not as compatible. I also like that this open-frame adapter is metal and has threaded mounting screw holes. And it may sound like a minor point but Mailiya includes adapter cables and mounting screws with their kit. If you’ve ever been working on something on a Sunday night and discover you don’t have some little part like a mounting screw you can appreciate that.QUALITY OF CONSTRUCTIONAs noted above, this adapter is made of metal. It falls at the mid-point in price compared to the rest of the brands but in terms of how it’s made it ranks at the top. The solder points are clean, the holes line up properly and it comes well-protected and dust-free. The entire printed circuit board is epoxy coated to eliminate any possibility of an accidental short-circuit cause by touching something inside the computer chassis.PEFORMANCESome of the newest NGFF drives represent the fastest data transfer rates ever and the last thing you want it to slow them down with an interface or adapter card. The Mailiya adapter performs flawlessly at the full spec’d data rate of the SSD.INSTALLATION HINTSI’ve seen some comments about the screw head for mounting the SSD being too small or the user having to find washers to hold the board down. That’s not the way the SSD anchor post works. What you do is remove it using the screw on the PCB side of the frame, then mount your SSD into position and slide the groove in the brass ferrule into the open-ended notch at the non-terminal end of the SSD, then fasten the entire assembly back to the PCB with the screw on the underside. The result is a rock-solid mount of your SSD to the adapter frame. On the subject of installation, note that the chip side of the SSD mounts upward in this adapter, optimizing air circulation. I’ve seen comments about other brands that mount the chip side down, thereby trapping the hot components with no air circulation. This design is obviously preferable.RATINGThere is nothing I would suggest or improve on this device. I spent a lot of time evaluating everything that’s available for this application and believe this model is the best overall value out there.

Regarding the Mailiya 2.5in SATA III 3 to M.2 NGFF SSD adapter tray: This item is super-low quality. I suspect these multiple 5 star reviews are shills. The IC board itself is the principle structural member and the "metal adapter" are simple bent pot-metal pieces screwed to the IC board. In my case they were not square and warped the board. The mounting method for the SSD is just a hole in the IC board with a screw and nut (oh sorry, a "brass ferrule") that doesn't hold the SSD securely and you need 3 hands to install it. I have a modern motherboard that supports the latest technologies and I cannot boot from the SSD drive on this adapter. I can boot with same SSD in a different M.2 slot. I can boot to another drive and then read/write to this drive but I cannot boot from this SSD adapter even though the description says so. Speaking of, who the hell would install DOS on their SATA III SSD M.2 drive?I think the controller in this adapter is just too slow for the BIOS to recognize it as a boot device. I'm using an Intel H170 chipset with i7700 CPU and I can boot Win7 and Win10 from all the SATA ports and M.2 ports. But cannot boot from any drive on this adapter. The description says you can boot from it but that's not true in my case. I'm a 50 year old life-long PC builder so I doubt it was my error. Two stars because it does work if you boot to a different device.

WORKS GREAT IN A SMALLER CONFIG.

don't know why but its dead, it kills any power source I tried to plug it into. I don't trust it!

My M.2 HyperX didn't fit in it.

when I try to connect it the driver seems to fail each time.

works great on my 2280 sand disk ssd

WOULD work great if the mother bleeping thing was the RIGHT titem! Apparently I have 2017 NVMe AHHHH! I hate this whole NVMe BS already!!