SanDisk are synonymous with portable storage and have already released an Extreme Portable SSD, but today we look at the Pro version with read and write speeds in excess of 1GB/s.
Product on Review: SanDisk Extreme Pro Portable SSD
Manufacturer: SanDisk
Street Price:
500GB GBP £126.99 / USD $125.99 / AUS $TBA
1TB GBP £229.99 / USD $229.99 / AUS $TBA
2TB GBP £TBA / USD $429.99 / AUS $TBA
SanDisk, a storage expert in their own right, are now owned by Western Digital, allowing the two companies to merge their expertise to produce better products for their customers.
Last year SanDisk brought to market the Extreme Portable SSD, boasting access speeds in excess of 500MB/s and capacities up to 2TB. Today we look at the evolution of that, the Extreme Pro Portable SSD. The Pro portion of the name relates to the upgraded controller and NAND flash that’s capable of up to 1050MB/s across a USB 3.1 Gen. 2 (10Gbps) connection.
The SanDisk Extreme Pro Portable SSD is a rugged, pocket-friendly, flash-based storage drive available in 500GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities. The forged aluminium body helps to dissipate heat and protect the data inside, while the durable silicon rubber coating offers better drop protection and the IP55 dust and water resistance means you can take this almost anywhere, safely.
Thanks to 25 years of SanDisk experience, they’re happy to offer a 5-year warranty with your portable SSD, giving you a great deal of peace of mind. Pricing is somewhat higher than the previous model, making the additional speed a premium option.
SanDisk on the Extreme Pro Portable SSD:
The SanDisk Extreme PRO® portable SSD leverages our lightning-fast, in-house NVMe technology to dramatically increase transfer speeds to up to 1050 MB/s** letting you move files faster and edit right from the drive. Its ruggedized1 case helps keep your content protected no matter where you take it. And it’s no problem to deliver files when you have up to 2TB* of space for a full library of content in a pocket-sized design. Whether you’re working on PC or Mac™ computers, and with USB Type C and Type A connectors,3 the Extreme PRO® SSD works the way you work, as fast as you do.
Technical Specifications
Dimensions: 112 mm x 58 mm x 11.5 mm
Weight:: 0.174 lbs (79g)
Water resistant:: IP55 for water and dust resistance
Interface:: USB 3.1 (Gen 2)
Operating temperature:: 32ºF to 95ºF (0ºC to 35ºC)
Storage temperature:: -4ºF to 158ºF (-20ºC to 70ºC)
Shock:: Shock-resistant (up to 1500G) and vibration resistant (5g RMS, 10-2000HZ)
Vibration:: 10Hz-2000Hz 5gRMS
Compatible with:: PC & Mac computers — no driver needed
Compatible with:: Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows® 7, Windows Vista and Mac OS 10.9+
Weight:: 0.174 lbs (79g)
Water resistant:: IP55 for water and dust resistance
Interface:: USB 3.1 (Gen 2)
Operating temperature:: 32ºF to 95ºF (0ºC to 35ºC)
Storage temperature:: -4ºF to 158ºF (-20ºC to 70ºC)
Shock:: Shock-resistant (up to 1500G) and vibration resistant (5g RMS, 10-2000HZ)
Vibration:: 10Hz-2000Hz 5gRMS
Compatible with:: PC & Mac computers — no driver needed
Compatible with:: Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows® 7, Windows Vista and Mac OS 10.9+
Packaging, Bundle & Closer Look
The packaging is surprisingly large for a portable SSD, but the capacity and speed is listed clearly on the front with a clear image of the device.
Further details are listed on the rear in a very many languages.
Considering the size of the packaging, you’d expect many extras but inside is a wafer-thin product/warranty leaflet, a USB Type-A to Type-C and Type-C to Type-C cable and that’s it. We’d really like to see companies cut their packaging sizes down as much as possible and there’s definitely room to reduce the size here.
The Extreme Pro Portable SSD is coated in a durable silicon rubber in a lovely deep blue colour that contrasts fantastically against the burnt orange/red accents.
The reverse is given a smooth rubber coating that makes it incredibly grippy. Under the rubber is an aluminium frame that, paired with the rugged outer skin, provides the drive with an IP55 resistance rating.
Centralised on the bottom of the drive is the USB Type-C 3.1 Gen. 2 interface.
Test Setup & Methodology
Our test system is formatted and a fresh version of Windows is installed with just drives in place – no additional applications. Windows is then updated to the latest release and the drivers are installed.Included in the list of benchmarks are the following applications:
Benchmarks
Anvil Pro
AS SSD
ATTO Disk Benchmark v2.46
CrystalDiskMark
AIDA64
Games Transfer (Rise of the Tomb Raider, Total War: WARHAMMER & War Thunder – 85.3GB)
AS SSD
ATTO Disk Benchmark v2.46
CrystalDiskMark
AIDA64
Games Transfer (Rise of the Tomb Raider, Total War: WARHAMMER & War Thunder – 85.3GB)
Test system:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3800X
Motherboard: MSI Prestige X570 Creation
Graphics: AMD Radeon RX480
Memory: 16GB (2x 8GB) Corsair Vengeance LPX 3000MHz
PSU: Corsair RM750x
OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro 64-Bit
Monitor: ASUS ROG PG279Q
Motherboard: MSI Prestige X570 Creation
Graphics: AMD Radeon RX480
Memory: 16GB (2x 8GB) Corsair Vengeance LPX 3000MHz
PSU: Corsair RM750x
OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro 64-Bit
Monitor: ASUS ROG PG279Q
Benchmarks: Anvil Pro
Anvil Pro from Anvil Storage utilities is one of the most popular storage benchmarking utilities today thanks to the large suit of tests available. You can test pretty much anything from Read/write Speed to IOPs with many variables to tweak allowing you to get either a single or host of results to compare with other likeminded enthusiasts. In our test we ran the standard suite 5 times, subtracting both the highest and lowest scores and determined the final result from the average of the remaining three results.
Benchmarks: AS SSD
AS SSD Benchmark is a straightforward tool for measuring the speed of your SSD drive.
Simply launch the program, choose your drive, click Start, and it’ll test your SSD’s read and write speed in a variety of ways, delivering a score for each when it’s done. And if that’s not enough, there are also additional file copy and compression-related benchmarks available from the Tools menu. (The author’s support page is German only, but if you need further English explanations then there’s a thread on the program at the OCZ Technology forum.).
Simply launch the program, choose your drive, click Start, and it’ll test your SSD’s read and write speed in a variety of ways, delivering a score for each when it’s done. And if that’s not enough, there are also additional file copy and compression-related benchmarks available from the Tools menu. (The author’s support page is German only, but if you need further English explanations then there’s a thread on the program at the OCZ Technology forum.).
Benchmarks: ATTO
The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.
Benchmarks: AIDA64
With this module, we can measure the performance of the PC’s storage devices, including (S)ATA or SCSI hard disk drives, RAID arrays, optical drives, solid-state drives (SSD), USB drives and memory cards. It also allows us to perform write tests, which helps us detect fake products and errors on the devices. In order to attain reliable benchmark results we have to make sure to close all background applications.
Benchmarks: CrystalDiskMark
CrystalDiskMark is an open source disk drive benchmark tool for Microsoft Windows. Based on Microsoft’s MIT-licensed Diskspd tool, this graphical benchmark is commonly used for testing the performance of solid-state storage. It works by reading and writing through the filesystem in a volume-dependent way. It generates read/write speeds in sequential and random positions with varying numbers of queues and threads.
Benchmarks: Games Transfer
To test the “real world” performance of the drive, we transfer the Rise of the Tomb Raider, Total War: WARHAMMER and War Thunder Steam files from an M.2 NVMe drive to the external drive. These files total 85.3GB and feature a mix of large and small files.
Conclusion
SanDisk’s reputation goes forwards another step, as far as we’re concerned, with another strong release.The outer enclosure feels excellent in the hand and our best efforts to twist or deform the drive were completely futile. The build quality is rock solid and thanks to the solid state storage inside, drops are much less of a worry than if it was the old-fashion spinny type. The IP55 dust and water resistance also adds peace of mind, should you ever need to take your favourite photos on an outdoor excursion.
Speed, as you can see from our results graphs, were excellent, but we were 10% down on the quoted 1050MB/s which was a shame, particularly in CrystalDiskMark which is well-known for finding a drive’s maximum throughput.
While UK and Aussie pricing is yet to be confirmed, we do have US pricing that we can work from. There are many other external USB SSDs, even their own previous-gen models, that are considerably cheaper, so the additional speed offered by the Pro version comes at quite a cost.
The SanDisk Extreme Pro Portable SSD looks and feels great, is backed by a decent IP55 rating and comes with a 5-year warranty but it’s not cheap.
Pros
+ Good performance
+ Rock solid and attractive design
+ IP55 dust and water resistance
Cons
– Couldn’t hit the 1050MB/s speeds
– Expensive
– Wasteful packaging
+ Good performance
+ Rock solid and attractive design
+ IP55 dust and water resistance
Cons
– Couldn’t hit the 1050MB/s speeds
– Expensive
– Wasteful packaging
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