Company: PlugablePrice: $299 (1TB); $499 (2TB)Rating:Hot: Speed; quality of build; priceNot: Cable is integrated and a little shortPlugable
Thunderbolt 3
NVme
Review by Erik VlietinckExternal SSD Drive
Plugable has just released its mobile Thunderbolt 3 NVMe 1 TB
drive, and I took it for a spin. Plugable’s drive is about half the
length of an iPhone and almost two iPhones thick. It’s made of
aluminum, looks rock solid, and has a generous number of cooling
ribs on three sides. The smooth metal backside is home to a very
short, integrated 20cm Thunderbolt 3 cable.
The Thunderbolt 3 NVme is available in 1-TB and 2-TB capaci-
ties (I received the 1-TB version). The only accessory in the box
is a velvet pouch that sits tightly around the body of the drive,
but leaves the cable exposed. I’m not a huge fan of integrated
cables, certainly not on mobile drives that are often tossed into
a bag or case and can easily end up snatched if you’re not care-
ful. But perhaps the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. For
instance, you can’t forget to take one with you when leaving for
an important job, nor can you mistake a 10 GB/s, USB-C cable for
a 40-GB/s Thunderbolt 3 one.
I ran Blackmagic Design’s Disk Speed Test app and was pleas-
antly surprised by the Plugable’s performance with a write speed
of 1636 MB/s and read speed of 2266 MB/s. The benefits of
such monster speeds immediately became obvious when I tried
uploading a couple of 10-minute video clips to the Plugable and
rendering out the clips, with a blur and ColorSynth effect, in Final
Cut Pro X. Final Cut finished rendering about three times as fast as
when the clip resided on the iMac’s built-in Fusion disk.
There appears to be no throttling going on so, although higher
temperatures may shorten the lifespan of the unit a bit, you won’t
see a rendering, offload, or backup job slowing down to a frac-
tion of the initial speed when the going gets...hot. The Plugable
retails at $299 for the 1 TB model and $499 for the 2 TB model. n› › REVIEWS> KELBY ONE.COM
[ 111 ]