PC World - USA (2020-04)

76 PCWorld APRIL 2020

REVIEWS SANDISK EXTREME PRO PORTABLE SSD

numbers below, where the advantage

became overwhelming.

The primary reason for the landslide

victory was that the Extreme Pro Portable

wrote at a relatively steady 600MBps or so,

while the T7 started at over 500MBps and

dropped to around 300MBps when it ran out

of cache. That occurred at around 4 percent

of total capacity, or the 20GB mark with the

500GB T7 we tested. More capacious

models of the T7 will run out of cache later in

the process, narrowing but not eliminating

the margin of defeat.

The Samsung T7 is a slightly faster reader,

but being a distant second writing really hurt its

conglomerate score in the 48GB tests. How

much the slow writing will affect you depends

on how you use your drive. For small amounts

of data, the difference won’t tell. However, the

time you’ll save on writes with the Extreme Pro

Portable will tell over the long haul.

Testing is performed on Windows 10,

64-bit running on a Core i7-5820K/Asus X99

Deluxe system with four 16GB Kingston

2666MHz DDR4 modules, a Zotac (NVidia)

GT 710 1GB x2 PCIe graphics card, and an

Asmedia ASM2142 USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gbps)

card. Also on board are a Gigabyte

GC-Alpine Thunderbolt 3 card and

Softperfect’s Ramdisk 3.4.6, which is used for

the 48GB read and write tests.

BOTTOM LINE

The Sandisk Extreme Pro Portable SSD is

faster and only a bit larger that the Samsung

T7. I admit that I enjoy the Samsung T7’s

fingerprint swiper, but otherwise, the Sandisk

Extreme Portable Pro is the portable USB SSD

you want when you’re dealing with large

amounts of data.

SanDisk Extreme Pro

Portable SSD

PROS

• Overall fastest USB SSD currently available.


• Relatively affordable.


• IP55 rated against dust and mild streams of water.
  CONS


• Slightly slower reading files than Samsung’s T7.
  BOTTOM LINE
  The SanDisk Extreme Pro Portable SSD is the fastest
  writer we’ve seen by far. It’s IP55-rated to fend off
  dust and water, affordable for its ilk, and we even like
  the looks. Unless you want the fingerprint security
  offered by its Samsung T7 rival, this is the drive.
  $229

The Pro version of the Extreme Portable rules

when it comes to long sustained writes. No other

USB SSD we’ve tested even comes close.

450GB write

450GB write

Seconds

1,324

872

SanDisk Extreme Portable Pro SSD SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD

LONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE

Samsung T7 Samsung T5

1,325

1,366