The Advantages Of Samsung Portable SSD X5

Most current external SSD storage rarely achieves transfer speeds beyond 550 megabytes per second (MB / s). Among other things, this is due to the fact that the interfaces of the used mSATA memory no longer give. 

Samsung’s Portable SSD X5 Is Different

It uses a flash memory with NVMe interface, as they use modern internal SSD storage for fast PCI Express transfers. And so that the connection does not become a bottleneck, the X5 connects via Thunderbolt 3 with computers. We have measured with the 1 terabyte large version of the memory, what comes out.

Nothing Works Without Thunderbolt 3

In order to be able to ride Samsung’s high-speed SSD, you need a computer whose equipment meets the high demands. Thunderbolt 3 cannot be found on many notebooks, USB 3.1 is still standard here. On such devices you need the X5 but not only plug in, without Thunderbolt 3 no data flows. And even if the required port is present, the computer’s SSD may not be able to keep up, or the PCI express transmission may run on fewer channels than Samsung’s Turbo Storage.

Faster Than The Internal SSD

The test results are impressive. In System Test Lite, the Samsung Portable SSD X5 reached speeds of around 2550 MB / s, data it wrote at about 1800 MB / s. In the Blackmagic Disk Speed ​​Test, the memory came to just under 2400 MB / s (read) and 1750 MB / s (write). In both tests, the X5 left the internal SSD of the MacBook Pro at the write rates (1300 MB / s) clearly behind. While reading, both memories were a bit faster. A 30-gigabyte folder of photos and videos were copied from internal to external storage after about 15 seconds.

The Samsung Portable SSD X5 is extremely fast and displays the taillights, especially when reading data from all external SSD competitors. However, it costs about 500 euros with 1 TB in online trading, with 500 GB about 250 euros. That’s a lot of money and is really only worthwhile for users who need the speed and whose hardware can exploit the X5 -for example, in the professional 4K video editing.