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A tipping point has been reached where USB4 has suddenly become the connection technology for external SSDs, and a flood of new products are hitting shelves in this category.
Never a shrinking violet, SanDisk (aka Western Digital) has revamped its SanDisk Extreme PRO series with a new drive that adds “with USB4” to the end of what is already an excessively long name.
With the same styling as the previous Extreme Pro drives but scaled up, this USB-C connected external storage boasts 3800MB/s reads, and 3700MB/s writes when connected to a USB 4 compatible port. It will work with older USB standards, but the drive doesn’t come with a USB-A adapter, and the performance is significantly less if you use USB 3.2 or USB 2.0.
The specification is remarkably close to the Corsair EX400U that we reviewed recently, although this is physically bigger, and that size affords it more protection from being dropped.
Where it is less attractive than the Corsair drive is the price, which is great irrespective of where you buy this hardware.
The only mitigation for the additional expense is that SanDisk offers a five-year warranty, whereas most competitors only provide three years of coverage.
While the SanDisk Extreme PRO with USB4 might not be the fastest or the cheapest option in USB4 external storage, it’s certainly good enough to be included in our best portable SSD collection.
SanDisk Extreme PRO with USB4: Pricing and availability
- How much does it cost? Starts from £250.99/$279.99/€349,99
- When is it out? Available now
- Where can you get it? Sold through online retailers and also directly from SandDisk.
Typically, with external SSDs, I’d recommend shopping around for the best deal. However, SanDisk appears to have an iron grip on resellers, which results in the same pricing directly from the maker and online retailers.
Only available in 2TB and 4TB options, the smaller model is $279.99 in the USA, £250.99 in the UK, and €349,99 in Europe.
That’s much more expensive than the 2TB Corsair EX400U, where that drive sells for $189.99, £199.99 and €239.99, depending on where you are.
That’s disturbingly 47% more expensive than the EX400U in the USA.
The asking price for the 4TB model is $429.99 in the US, £ 384.99 in the UK and €534.99 in Europe, which is only 22% more expensive than the EX400U in the USA, 7% more in the UK and 26% more for Europeans.
Those numbers don’t reflect the exchange rates between the dollar, pound and euro, but to give you a flavour of that adjustment, the 4TB would cost $496 in the UK, and $579 in Europe.
However, when you look at this pricing overall, SanDisk has priced this product much closer to the Nextorage NX-PS1PRO than the Corsair EX400U.
Therefore, this isn’t a cheap option. The lack of an 8TB model makes the Ugreen 40gbps M.2 Enclosure a genuine and cost-effective alternative for those that need the larger capacity.
SanDisk Extreme PRO with USB4: Specs
|
Model No. |
SDSSDE82-2T00-G25 |
|---|---|
|
Capacities |
2TB/4TB |
|
Capacity tested |
2TB |
|
Tested sequential performance (Read/Write) |
3809/3662 MB/s |
|
Connection |
USB 4.0, Thunderbolt, USB 3.2 Gen 2 or Gen 1 on USB-C |
|
Controller |
Unknown |
|
Encryption |
Hardware |
|
Dimensions |
140 x 68.7 x 11.9mm (WxHxD) |
|
Weight |
172g |
|
Power source |
USB-bus power |
|
Warranty |
5-year |
SanDisk Extreme PRO with USB4: Design
- Large for external SSD
- No USB-A adapter
- Damage protection
- Hardware encryption
Physically, this is easily one of the larger external SSDs I’ve seen, even making the chunky SanDisk PRO-G40 seem modest by comparison.
At 14cm long and weighing 172g, this won’t easily fit in a trouser pocket with the cable attached. The 28cm long USB-C cable is the only accessory SanDisk provides, and given the cost of this item that the maker didn’t include a USB-A adapter, which seems poor.
There is also no consideration given to what to do with the cable, and it’s certain that 3rd-party casemakers will be required to fill that niche.
What this unit offers that neither the Corsair EX400U nor Nextorage NX-PS1PRO delivers as effectively is damage protection. With an aluminium chassis, the entire boundary and underside of the drive has a thick coating of silicone rubberised material, making it seem remarkably solid and able to withstand plenty of knocks, drops, and even splashes with water.
According to SanDisk, the drive has been tested using IEC 60529 IP65, where it was able to withstand water flow (30 kPa) for 3 minutes. It can also survive a fall of 2 meters, but this claim doesn’t detail what it fell onto. Perhaps the hint that it wasn’t a cushion or a terrain of fresh marshmallows is that SanDisk has a five-year limited warranty on this hardware.
What’s mildly confusing about this drive is that it’s this large because it must have an M.2 2280 at its heart, whereas other products are using 2242 and even 2230 size devices to make the product smaller and lighter.
I assumed, incorrectly, that this was because Western Digital wasn’t making SSDs in these form factors, but I soon discovered that it does. The upshot is that the drive ended up more than twice the size of its closest competitor, the Corsair EX400U, when it might have been much more pocketable.
One final note: This drive supports hardware encryption, which wasn’t a feature that Corsair offers with the EX400U.
SanDisk Extreme PRO with USB4: Performance
- Needs USB 4.0
- Excellent performance
- Issues with Thunderbolt ports
|
Bench |
Test |
SanDisk Extreme PRO with USB4 2TB |
Corsair EX400U 2TB |
|---|---|---|---|
|
CrystalDiskMark 8.05 |
Default Read MB/s |
3810 |
4056 |
| Row 1 – Cell 0 |
Default Write MB/s |
3662 |
3630 |
| Row 2 – Cell 0 |
Real World Read MB/s |
2955 |
2303 |
| Row 3 – Cell 0 |
Real World Write MB/s |
2149 |
3269 |
|
AJA System Test 64GB |
Read MB/s |
3363 |
2827 |
| Row 5 – Cell 0 |
Write MB/s |
3189 |
2638 |
|
AS SSD |
Read MB/s |
3360 |
3506 |
| Row 7 – Cell 0 |
Write MB/s |
2739 |
3197 |
|
ATTO |
Read MB/s |
3530 |
3780 |
| Row 9 – Cell 0 |
Write MB/s |
3380 |
3470 |
|
PCMark Data Drive Bench |
Score |
2992 |
2028 |
My testing of this drive went deep into the weeds, metaphorically, as there appears to be an issue with the latest Thunderbolt 4 chipsets and USB4-compliant drives.
But before we go down that rabbit hole, overall, this drive is excellent, even if it is outperformed by the Corsair drive in some tests.
Things got slightly off track in testing, as these results were from a GMKtec K7 Pro Mini PC that uses the AMD Ryzen 9 PRO 6950H processor and has a USB4 port.
However, when I tested the drive using multiple Intel Core Ultra 2 laptops, the write performance of the SanDisk Extreme PRO with USB4 was about 500MB/s short of these numbers across the board. In the first CrystalMark test, the write speed was between 3,100 and 3,200.
Given that these machines both had Thunderbolt 4 ports, which is meant to be a super-set of USB4, this seemed odd, so I asked SanDisk if they could explain it.
The response I got was this:
“In order to get the maximum advertised speed for the SanDisk Extreme PRO with USB4, use a host that has a USB4 port for optimal conditions. While the drive is compatible with USB 3.2 and USB 2.0 devices, and supports Thunderbolt™ 4, performance may vary based on host device, usage conditions, and other factors.”
Not really an answer, is it?
Undeterred, I did some more testing and discovered that over Thunderbolt 4, the Corsair EX400U has exactly the same issue, pointing to the problem as to how the Intel Thunderbolt chipset deals with USB4 devices.
In short, if you want the full performance that this device has to offer, use a USB4 port and not Thunderbolt.
SanDisk Extreme PRO with USB4: Final verdict
SanDisk is responsible for only two issues with this product, the first being the size. Why the designers insisted on an enclosure this large, presumably for M.2 2280 scale drives, is a mystery. However, SanDisk may intend to launch an 8TB model at some point in the future, and getting that much flash on a drive is more straightforward with that form factor.
That guess makes perfect sense, as they already make an 8TB version of the SanDisk Desk Drive and its Creator-branded alternative.
The other problem is the price, which seems much less competitive than one might have hoped. While there is only a limited selection of USB4-compliant SSDs around now, by the end of this year, every brand in this sector will have some, and the prices will need to be lower.
In the coming months, we can also hope that whatever difficulty Intel has with its recent Thunderbolt chipset and write performance is also resolved, even if this isn’t something that SanDisk has an exclusive issue with.
Overall, this is a decent performer and a robust package, but it needed to be more price-sensitive from the start.
Should I buy the SanDisk Extreme PRO with USB4?
|
Value |
Priced above the Crucial EX400U by some margin |
3.5/5 |
|
Design |
Large and well protected, but lacks a USB-A adapter |
4 / 5 |
|
Performance |
A decent speed, but not the fastest, and some Thunderbolt issues |
4/ 5 |
|
Overall |
Durable design that needs to be cheaper in this competitive market |
4/ 5 |
Buy it if…
Don’t buy it if…
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