The SanDisk Extreme Portable may not have the most fluid setup, but despite the short cable that’s included and dated encryption application, the performance is undeniable. As we’ve seen with other external SSDs, the SanDisk Extreme Portable is just that, portable. It'll satisfy many shoppers, but it falls short of an Editors' Choice. Great news for photographers, because SSD technology is many times faster than HDD tech, which results in huge amounts of time saved when downloading and editing images. $40 to double your drive speed? That speed comes at a hefty cost, though. The 250GB drive, on the other hand, is almost double the price. This result was impressively close to Sandisk’s theoretical maximum of 550MB/s. The SanDisk Extreme Pro uses the PC SN730E for the internal SSD, not the WD Black SN750E (E for external firmware) that we expected. The LaCie is slightly more expensive, but it does offer more protection. Finally, the Extreme Pro carries a five-year warranty, while most rivals are limited to two or three years. Although the size of the drive has grown slightly to accommodate the size of an NVMe drive, it still remains the smallest on the market and will easily slip into a pocket. This thing promises transfer speeds in the 1,000MBps range, and it delivered in style. Your email address will not be published or shared. Jackery Explorer 500 Power Station Review. Receive news and offers from our other brands? For most people, I think the choice will simply come down to Sandisk Extreme Pro SSD vs. LaCie Rugged SSD. The Extreme Pro features an SLC write cache that absorbs most inbound write data, but the cache will fill, and performance will degrade during long transfers. As mentioned, the company includes two USB cables, one USB-C-to-USB-A and one USB-C-to-USB-C. (The device's interface is USB 3.1 Gen 2; the unit is backward-compatible with older USB specs, but if you use it with, say, a USB 3.0 connection, your peak read and write speeds will be affected.). Topping out at 2TB, a SanDisk Extreme Portable isn’t an ideal local backup solution. We test each product thoroughly and give high marks to only the very best. These are in ideal lab conditions, so the real-world result of 950MB/s is still incredibly impressive, and well within what I would call acceptable margins from the quoted max speeds. Receive news and offers from our other brands? As a sealed unit containing no moving parts, any SSD is inherently somewhat rugged. When I reviewed the older version I said it was the best value SATA SSD on the market, and now I have to say the Pro version is the best value NVMe SSD on the market. Encrypting and decrypting data can take some time, as it uses CPU resources. Not only does it maintain a speedy 20 Gbps link while connected to a PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD, but it also features link power management to reduce idle power consumption. Best Malware Removal and Protection Software, The Best SSDs for Upgrading Your Laptop in 2020, Samsung's Portable SSD T7 Offers Built-In Fingerprint Reader, Deals: 2TB Samsung 970 EVO SSD, Alienware Aurora Gaming Desktop, Apple's 'Australia tax' isn't as bad as it seems, Apple One Subscription Bundle Launches Today. The Sandisk Extreme Pro SSD is a worthy addition to the brand’s lineup. SanDisk’s Extreme Pro is faster than the previous-gen model but retains the greyish-blue hue and orange carabiner loop integrated into the forged aluminum construction, just like its predecessor. NVMe is actually capable of far more than 1000MB/s but the USB standard is not (currently). Not quite. Plus, it is capable of performance of up to 1,050MBps with its USB-C 10 Gbps interface. It is a workhorse. IP55-rated for shock-, dust-, and water-resistance. Posted by Dan Carr | Jul 4, 2020 | Gear Reviews. Careful examination of the NVMe landscape will reveal three different styles on the market. If you drop it into the surf, the bathtub, or your backyard koi pond, it's probably gone. Built with Divi. In each of those categories, we run two tests, one of which is a benchmark and the other is more of a hands-on trial. Online Storage or Online Backup: What's The Difference? The PCMark 8 storage subtest mimics typical productivity workloads such as word processing and videoconferencing. This is a drive you can actually submerge in water for several minutes. In addition, the drive comes with SanDisk's proprietary SecureAccess data encryption utility preinstalled. A new ASMedia ASM2364 bridge controller communicates with the host at faster speeds because it has twice the PCIe lane count as the ASM2362, which means twice the throughput. Though it wouldn’t look out of place considering how small it is, there are probably better solutions for transporting your drive. The new SanDisk Extreme Pro v2 comes with some changes under the hood, too. That comes at a cost, though, which can be a tough pill to swallow when you’re getting a quarter of the storage for twice the price compared to the Seagate Backup Plus Portable (read our Seagate Backup Plus Portable review). The company rates the drive to withstand a 2-meter drop onto a concrete floor. SanDisk's Extreme Pro Portable SSD ($229.99 for 1TB) does a great job in some of these areas—it's very fast and it comes with two USB Type-C cables, one with a … Please note that if you include a link in your comment, it will have to be moderated first before it appears on the site. There’s no benefit to using a drive that fast for ingesting memory cards from cameras because there are simply no cards out there that have read speeds reaching anything close to 2800MB/s. © This is an improvement over the SN750, and the SN730 also comes with WD’s 96L TLC NAND flash. The Sandisk Extreme Pro SSD is an upgraded version of the Sandisk Extreme Portable SSD that I have reviewed before, available in 500GB, 1TB and 2TB sizes. In the hand, the Extreme Pro SSD also feels a little more solid due to the use of aluminum in the case construction. Speed was first, so we used CrystalDiskMark to see how quick the drive was with sequential and random reads and writes. Now in 2020, we are seeing the next step in SSD technology: NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express). By Nick Rego 13 October 2020. And, I find SanDisk’s latest Extreme Pro portable SSD to be my go-to choice for the task. It's IP55-rated to fend off dust and water, affordable for its ilk, and we even like the looks. There isn’t a backup utility, but that’s not too much of a bother. It's a very good SSD, but just shy of an excellent one. If you do, SanDisk can't help you. We did five passes with a 4GB test file, and were happy with the results. As you can see in the screenshot below, the Extreme Portable went above the advertised speed of 550 megabytes per second with sequential reads. As noted earlier, the internals on this drive, like on the ADATA, Crucial, and CalDigit models charted below, are PCI Express-based and support NVMe; compare the numbers that these drives deliver with what we saw from the SATA-based HyperX Savage EXO. Rod Scher is a former director of technology of Cliffs Notes and several other companies, and is a retired teacher and software developer. If you’re taking the Extreme Portable on the go and you don’t have a USB-C port on your laptop, you’re forced to use a clucky adapter that just begs you to break it. It's not for the faint of wallet. It's a wash. For many years, he was the editor of Smart Computing Magazine. You shouldn’t have issues solving problems with your drive, either, considering how many support routes are available. A 2020 Guide to 2FA. Get instant access to breaking news, in-depth reviews and helpful tips. Bundled on the drive is … How will you take advantage of the speed? While the SanDisk SSDs have shipped with rather underwhelming software-based AES 128-bit encrypted password protection in the past, that changes with the new Extreme Pro.