The new SanDisk Extreme Pro Portable SSD V2 is a fast beast – around 2000MBps (Megabits per second) if you have the right USB-C connection. And with IP55 protection it is tough enough to take anywhere.
Unfortunately, most don’t have the latest USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 x2 PC so expect to achieve around 1000MBps on the SanDisk Extreme Pro Portable SSD V2. That is still very impressive. And accordingly, if you have USB-A 3.0 or earlier the speed literally halves again to 500MBps.
Let’s look at USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 x2
USB-IF announced USB 3.2 to enable 20Gbps bandwidth. It supports two high-speed differential pairs. One for normal USB-C 3.1/3.2 Gen 2, 10 Gbps. The other supports ALT DP (DisplayPort). If unused, it doubles the available data bandwidth to 20 Gbps.
Catch 22 is that as far as I can find there are no PC/Laptops and only computers need to be fitted with a PCIe expansion card 3.0 x4 for about $90. Or wait for USB-C 4.0 (Mac M1) or Thunderbolt 4.
Another Catch 22 is that this type of drive can, but not always, hang a USB-C 3.1/2 Gen 2 system requiring you to remove the drive to resume normal work.
Western Digital SanDisk Extreme Pro Portable SSD V2
- Website here
- 1 or 2TB
- Price: TBA
- Warranty: 5-years limited
Features
- Forged aluminium chassis and silicon shell
- Drop tested to 2M
- Carabiner loop
- On-device 256-bit AES hardware encryption
- 110.26 x 57.34 x 10.22 mm
- exFAT but can be reformatted
- Comes with USB-C to USB-C and USB-A to USB-C cable
- Uses the WD Black SN730E SSD, 96L BiCS 4 3D NAND flash
- 2000.3GB (formatted 1.863GB)
Tests
PCs including a Surface Pro 6 (USB-C 3.1 Gen 2) and HP x360 Spectre (Thunderbolt 3) recorded similar times of approx. 1000/1000MBps sequential read/write with is maximum for that interface.
An older Surface Pro 5 USB-A 3.0 recorded approx. half the above speeds.
A Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G recorded 1530/690MBps – excellent results and closer to the new standard.
GadgetGuys’ take – Extremely fast if you have the right PC
The device does not have a RAM cache so it can suffer from large files. Unless you have USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 x2 PC you would be best to render videos etc. on a PC/Laptop with fast 2000 to 3000Mbps internal SSD then use this for storage.
A terrific addition to the SanDisk Extreme range. But for most users get a USB-C 3.1 Gen 1 SanDisk for a far lower cost. Hence we have marked Value down.
