Last, here is a test of a brand new Trasncend 850.
It is not a M.2 SSD, so why did I tested this model ?
Because it's a NVMe SSD specially conceived for upgrading our 2013-2015 Macs, and advertised as such.
As it is NVMe I suspect it not to handle hibernation properly on a 2013-2014 Mac with the unpatched, factory Apple BootRom.
How will this SSD handle hibernation ?
And futures BootRom upgrades ?
This NVMe SSD has 4x PCIe 3.0 lanes.
It has the Apple 12+16 connector, so it doesn't need of course the Sintech adapter.
It has a read speed of ~1600 MB/sec and a write speed of next 1200 MB/sec.
To test speed and hibernation, I tested it on both a 2015 15" rMBP and on a 2014 13" rMBP that has its original, unpatched, Apple BootRom (up to date).
I set pmset to default values, and put the rMBP to sleep.
Did it wake up from hibernation after 3 hours ? On the 2015 rMBP : yes
On the 2014 rMBP : no...
Those are the same results as with any 2013-2014 mac and M.2 NVMe drive and Sintech adapter tested here : after 3 hours hibernaiton, it did hang at wake up, with a black screen and never resumed.
I tested it many times.
So, this upgrade specially built and sold for 2013-2015 macs does not hibernate properly out of the box.
Transcend themselves have a not on their support page : "Why my Mac can't wake up from sleep mode after installing JetDrive 850?"
https://us.transcend-info.com/Support/FAQ-1171
And their answer is to install their "Transcend JetDrive ToolBox", which I presume set "standby" mode to "0".
Unfortunately, I couldn't verify that because on my test machine, on 10.13.6, the Transcend Jetdrive Toolbox doesn't launch and exits with an error.
So, after all this thread, here is where we are : results are coherent.
Hibernation on 2013-2014 Macs doesn't work out of the box with any NVMe SSD, being it a Transcend 850 made for mac or any M.2 NVMe with Sintech adapter.
This is because Apple doesn't include the proper NVMe DXE driver in their BootRom
So I'm not really surprised : the Transcend 850 runs fine, but it has absolutely no advantage against any M.2 NVMe drive with the sintech adapter.
M.2 NVMe SSD with Sintech adapter offers the exact same behaviour as Transcend or OWC upgrade (there are lots of comment on amazon that the latest OWC Aura pro NVMe have the same hibernation problem :
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RD2Y5F92SQPCY/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_rvw_btm).
The only difference is that M.2 upgrades tested here are more than 2x times cheaper than OWC or Trasncend upgrades.
What I need to test now is future BootRom upgrades : current BootRom update provided by Apple with latest macOS updates don't work with NVMe drives.
This is a good thing for us if we use a 2013-2014 rMBP patched to have hibernation (the fact that BootRom updates fail prevents from the patch being crushed by a BootRom update)