Wow, X5 is really expensive at almost $400. Speed up to 2800 which is more than 5 times faster than other SSDs.
But I would really like to see how fast it is in a side by side comparison, to see if I even need that speed, maybe just speed of 550 might be good enough for me.
While the X5 is really fast, I use it as a boot drive on my Late 2012 iMac with only TB1, so I never actually see those really fast speed.
Another thing about the X5 is that some people have reported it being throttled to USB2 speeds when used for non-stop writes of large files (100GB+).
It appears to be working as intended since it is a thermal protection feature, once the drive gets to a specific temp, it will throttle the speed to keep it from over heating.
The issue is that the firmware has that temperature threshold set too low, so it might prematurely throttle the speed.
This may have been fixed with newer firmware, but I don't know for sure.
The reason I bring it up is that if you plan on using the NVMe as a boot drive and decide to go for the X5, it would most likely be fine as boot drives tend not to have long writes of large data without break (with the exception of the first-time recovery from a backup of cloning of an existing drive).
If you plan on using the X5 for long, non-stop writes, you might want to look elsewhere, as cheaper enclosures most likely do have that issue.
I just want it to be as fast as the SSD that came with my MBP 2014.
You do not have have TB3 on your 2014 MBP, but you do have TB2.
I use TB1, and get speeds around 800MBps write and 900MBps Read with the X5. Not saying it would be exactly double with Thunderbolt 2, but you may see speeds around 1600MBps write and 1800MBps read using the X5 over TB2.
Although, I would suggest not using the X5, and maybe use an NVMe enclosure that has its own power supply.
You can use TB3 devices over TB1 and TB2 using Apple's bidirectional adapter, but this does not provide power via the bus. You must either use a TB3 dock or a TB3 device with its own power supply.
AFAIK the Samsung X5 is the exception, not the rule. Most consumer SSDs contain the same memory chips from other products (eg. Samsung T5/Samsung 860) but they'd be useless without the enclosure they come in.
Interesting, as this has not been my experience.
I am not saying you are wrong, but I have taken the drives out of every external drive I have owned, and replaced it with a different drive at some point.
I have not had any issue with doing this, but would not be surprised if there are drives out there that would only take brand specific SSDs, especially newer ones.
