Dockcase's peripherals are always interesting in that the company likes to put screens on a lot of them, giving you live information about what's going on in them. In the past, I've tried some of the company's USB hubs and found them interesting, albeit a bit finicky. However, the Dockcase Pocket Photography Edition is a new kind of device; being a portable SSD enclosure, you can easily slip into a pocket while still having that display for live information.

While the usefulness of that display is debatable, the Dockcase Pocket M.2 SSD enclosure does its job well. If you want an easy way to move photos off your phone or simply move content between devices, this is a very good option, and it's plenty fast, too.

About this review: Dockcase sent me the Pocket Photography Edition enclosure along with a 128GB SSD for testing. The company had no input on the contents of this review. An SSD is not included with the final product.

Pricing and availability

The Dockcase Pocket Photography Edition is currently available on Kickstarter, with a super early bird pricing starting at $79. Multiple tiers of discounts are available on Kickstarter ahead of the full launch, though. The official MSRP starts at $119 for the Matte Black edition, while the Stripe edition I have for review costs $129.

Dockcase products typically launch on Amazon, so you should also be able to find them there after the official launch.

Design

Tiny, but premium-feeling

Dockcase always makes hardware that feels pretty good, and it's no different here. The Pocket Photography Edition comes in an aluminum chassis with a glass top cover, and while it's tiny and light, it has some reassuring heft and sturdiness to it. This feels like something you can take anywhere, and the same goes for the sleeved cable, which feels like it wouldn't be easy to break.

Compared to the standard Dockcase Pocket, this model is a little larger, and that's because it's meant for photographers, whether that's using a professional camera or a smartphone. On the sides of the drive are two quarter-inch screw holes, which can be used with a typical camera tripod mount. This is a piece of equipment I actually don't have, but if you're a photographer and don't already have one, you'll probably want it. Some of the Kickstarter rewards let you buy one of these mounts. Without it, you'll have to hold the camera and SSD in your hands, and you might risk losing a video recording or something due to jostling the cable. That's happened to me a few times.

There's also a button on the other side of the SSD, which can be used to navigate the menu on the enclosure itself since it has a display.

The display has some useful information

A trend in Dockcase's devices is always having a screen, and that screen can usually do some cool stuff. The main screen of the Dockcase Pocket shows you information about the connection to the host device, most notably the speed. This was a cool way to learn that my mid-range phone supports USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5Gbps) speeds, something even the latest iPhone 15 doesn't have. You'll be able to identify whether the host device supports USB 2.0 or USB 3.2 Gen 2, too. When writing or reading data, you can also see the read and write speeds, plus you can tell how much data has been written in total during the current session once the transfer stops.

Otherwise, the screen shows you the SSD model currently inside the enclosure as well as the health status of the SSD, so you can tell if you might need to replace it. You can also see the temperature of the SSD here, which is pretty useful if you're worried about overheating (though there seems to be no reason to). Another feature shown here is the status of the power loss protection feature, which is meant to prevent issues with the SSD in case of sudden power loss.

It also has other cool features, like a monitoring screen where you can see the power intake and temperature on a graph to evaluate how it's changing to ensure it's all stable. You also have an option for firmware settings (though I see no reason to touch this) or detailed information about the SSD.

I mostly looked at this display for fun rather than anything necessarily useful, though it did come in handy when stress-testing the SSD to see what temperatures it would reach. I'm still not convinced every device like this needs to have a screen, but it's a neat novelty all the same.

Performance

It's pretty fast

Dockcase sent me the Pocket Photography Edition along with a 128GB SK Hynix SSD using PCIe 3.0, and it supports M.2 2230 SSDs, made popular by the Steam Deck and Asus ROG Ally. The final unit doesn't include an SSD, though, and this was so that I could actually use the product. PCIe 3.0 is not the latest technology, but the maximum theoretical speed of 3,500MB/s is still incredibly fast. Remember, this is connecting via USB 3.2 Gen 2, so the speeds would never exceed 10Gbps, which in theory would be 1,250MB/s.

That being said, the Dockcase Pocket performed very well in my testing. When connected to a USB 3.2 Gen 2 port, CrystalDiskMark returned read speeds up to 1,059MB/s and write speeds up to 985MB/s.

Similarly, ATTO Disk Benchmark also shows speeds exceeding 1,000MB/s in its test.

I also tried a more real-life test of moving a 5.44GB ISO file to and from the SSD, which took about 11.01 seconds to copy onto the SSD and roughly 5.6 seconds to copy back to the host PC. Plus, recording 4K 30FPS video showed no issues with the SSD keeping up, either.

I never noticed the SSD getting too warm. The hottest I got it was around 47°C when I was running an ATTO test on it using a 32GB file size. That was an intense and frankly unnecessary test that doesn't represent a very realistic use case, so I don't think you'll have any issues. After a 25-minute video recording, it was at around 33°C, which is not a problem.

The SSD will work with any PC, Android phone, or iPhone model with a USB-C port (currently just the iPhone 15 family), plus some cameras that may support external storage. Unfortunately, that's not the case for my Sony ZV-E10, so I couldn't test it there.

Some hiccups

I mentioned above that I've lost some videos due to jostling the cable while recording, but I should also note that when I mentioned this problem to Dockcase, I was sent a firmware upgrade to help with this issue, so I'm not completely sure what caused it. Either way, I haven't had any such issues with recording videos for the past couple of weeks, so it seems things have improved. It's possible that the jostling was the issue, though.

I'd also like to mention that, for whatever reason, this SSD did not work with my Khadas Mind review unit. The SSD becomes unresponsive whenever I connect to this PC, and even CrystalDiskMark won't run. I've tested many laptops and some phones with it, though, and this is the only PC that's given me that problem, so I'm inclined to blame the computer. Still, I feel like I need to mention it.

Should you buy the Dockcase Pocket Photography Edition?

The Dockcase Pocket Photography Edition is a pretty nice SSD enclosure. Its tiny size makes it perfect for taking with you on the go, and it still offers plenty of performance to handle photo and video recording with no issue. If you only want it as an SSD for a computer, the original Dockcase Pocket is probably better since it's cheaper and smaller without the screw holes. But if you do want to use it as storage for photos and videos straight from your phone, it works great.

You should buy the Dockcase Pocket Photography Edition if:

• You want a super portable SSD to connect to your phone to take photos and videos
• You have a mounting mechanism for the SSD
• The display on the enclosure is useful to you

You shouldn't buy the Dockcase Pocket Photography Edition if:

• You only plan to use it with your PC
• You need Thunderbolt-level speeds