“Failed to operate. I first intended to use the M2 top hat which failed to operate at all - no power led on & seemingly dead on arrival. But with the bottom hat, using the same connecting cable, with the same nvme ssd drive, it fired up immediately and booted into ubuntu. This was disappointing to say the least. Is it possible to have a replacement M2 top hat mailed to me ? thank you. James Smith axiomdog@gmail.com”
“Easy to attach and worked out-of-the-box with a newly-bought Pi 5. I combined this with an NVMe SSD drive and was able to boot the Pi from it directly (after burning raspbian to the drive) without needing to make any firmware changes. Note that using the included 18mm GPIO stacking header and 14mm spacers (which make it fit nicely above the active cooler's fan with a gap for air) ends up with the pins flush with the top of the pass-through connectors on the board — you can see this in the photo of it assembled in the case. This is fine (tidy, even) if you just want a Pi with an M.2 connector, but means the pins are no-longer accessible, so buy a longer GPIO stacking header if you want to use this and also connect components.”
“I have looked around for alternative versions and concluded that this one, with the screen/camera cut out works the best. It also has a sufficient air gap if you have used the official Raspberry Pi Active cooler to ensure air flow around the Pi5. Works well.”
“Nice piece of kit, simple install and setup. I know it's safe because it's the official HAT.
I use it with a M2 NVMe 2 Port SATA Adapter Card JMB582 .”
