Samsung Portable SSD X5: Fast SSD (Topic)

The latest SSDs are fast. True, this cannot always be used in practice, since modern portable solutions do not allow them to fully realize their capabilities. The main reason for this lies in the limited capabilities of the USB interface. However, the engineers of the Korean company Samsung found a way out of this situation. They designed and brought to market a Thunderbolt 3 device.

Design features, technical characteristics

The Samsung Portable SSD X5 range includes three modifications. They differ only in volume: 500 GB, 1 TB, 2 TB.

There's a lot of space for designers. This is one of the features of external devices, in contrast to, for example, NVMe products, which are inserted into a connector on the motherboard. Therefore, the X5 is no exception. It features a sleek plastic body with a contrasting color scheme.

The device turned out to be rather large and heavy. But this is not a miscalculation or a whim of the manufacturer's engineers. This is a design feature that is associated with the fact that products of this type get hotter than their "colleagues" from the camp of slower SATA drives. Therefore, this feature had to be taken into account by the creators of the Portable SSD X5.

To protect the parts of the device, a metal cooling radiator was installed under the plastic case. It protects the board with microcircuits from overheating.

Practice shows that Samsung engineers did everything right. This form factor does not allow the device to heat up above 430C. This was shown by tests carried out before the commercial use of the gadget.

Weighing 150 grams, it received the following geometric parameters: 119 x 62 x 19.7 mm. Therefore, its dimensions may seem large only when compared with external drives. In fact, the Portable SSD X5 is smaller than most modern smartphones.

Among other characteristics of the device, it is worth noting the presence of a Samsung Phoenix Controller in the filling, which provides a maximum read / write speed of 2800/2300 MB / s.

The gadget that the most demanding will like

It has already been said above that the manufacturer, in order to realize the potential of a fast SSD-drive, had to abandon the USB 3.0 standard, which has become familiar to many. There is an explanation for this: after all, the most advanced version of USB 3.2 Gen 2 ? 2 at the moment is capable of delivering a speed of no more than 2400 Mb / s. This is only theoretical data.

Practice shows that they are much lower. This is not enough, especially when you consider the current specifications of the current solid state drives in the mid and high end segments.

This is the main reason for equipping the Samsung Portable SSD X5 with Thunderbolt 3, which provides up to 5 Gb / s bandwidth.

The third generation of the device uses a USB Type-C connector. However, this does not mean that it operates from this port. The Portable X5 will show its full strength only if it is connected to the port in which the corresponding protocol is used. In addition, the connection cable must also be Thunderbolt.

Also convenient is that backward compatibility is provided: it is permissible to use the cable from the X5 in conjunction with other devices and USB Type-C connectors.

Probably the fastest in the world

The device of Korean developers is not the fastest in the world, but it is definitely one of the leaders in its market segment. This is evidenced by its impressive performance: up to 2800 MB / s - during sequential read operations, up to 2300 MB / s - when writing information.

Data security is also ensured properly. For this, 256-bit AES encryption is provided at the hardware level. You can activate it and set a password to access the contents of the drive.

There is a proprietary Samsung utility for this, which is preinstalled on the disk. It is also used to update the firmware.

Test results

Enthusiasts ran a series of tests on the Samsung Portable SSD X5. To do this, they used a Macbook Pro 16 that supports Thunderbolt 3.

First, we tested the operation of the device using the DiskMark utility, as its creators assured that it has indicators that are as close to real ones as possible. We got read / write results at the level of 2462/1709 MB / s.

They are slightly lower than those stated by the company, but still higher than the results shown by analogues of most other manufacturers.

After that, the functioning of the gadget was tested on the Disk Speed Test program, which develops video software. Here the drive showed the data that is as close as possible to the promised. Reading speed was 2600 MB / s, writing - 2000 MB / s.

Summary

Currently Portable X5 is not suitable for all users. It can only be recommended to those with a Thunderbolt 3 interface. There is also an opinion that some will not like its dimensions. But here it is worth understanding that the manufacturer took such a step to create a device with high performance.

It is sure to appeal to those looking for a portable storage device with performance close to the best internal SSDs.

The Topic of Article: Samsung Portable SSD X5: Fast SSD.
Author: Jake Pinkman