Quick review
The good
The not-so-good
Backups are important, but they can take time. Fortunately, SSDs are here to ease that burden considerably, something the SanDisk Extreme Pro Portable SSD USB4 drive does in spades.
Backing up is one of those things everyone should do, and for that, you need an external drive. SanDisk has made a name for itself in storage, with the WD-owned brand commonly recognised for SD cards and microSD cards, the sort that can be found in cameras of all kinds.
However, folks using cameras are likely also dealing with big files sizes that need to be backed up.
Photos and videos are big files, and they in turn need not just a big bit of storage to back up to, but one that’s also fast. Time is money, and if you’re waiting for your drive to finish backing up, you might as well be burning through cash.
And that may well be where SanDisk’s latest external comes in.
What is the SanDisk Extreme Pro Portable SSD?
SanDisk’s Extreme Pro Portable SSD is built largely for this, as SanDisk continues from its “Extreme Pro” line of memory for creatives, building on that with a fast and durable bit of storage.
For creative professionals, that means a durable external with hyperfast speeds, which is what this drive aims to be. Encased in aluminium and supported by a silicone shell with an IP65 water, dust, and shock-resistant design (from falls of up to two metres), it’s not your regular disk drive, that’s for sure.
What does it do?
Like other external drives, SanDisk’s Extreme Pro Portable SSD is exactly what the name says: a portable solid state drive made for extreme and professional situations.
Okay, technically the “Extreme Pro” name doesn’t imply the extreme harsh environments, but it does almost always infer professional situations, much like the SD and microSD cards that feature the same branding.
The name isn’t super imaginative, but it is descriptive for what it’s meant to do: a portable drive meant for folks who need the very limit of portable SSDs.
Does it do the job?
When it comes to external SSDs, the main qualifier is whether it stores data and does it quickly.
That’s one thing solid state drives have over their conventional hard disk drive cousins, with more speed because of the storage type. No moving parts is alway going to be faster than the drive heads and moving parts needed for the regular HDD you might backup to, portable or desktop.
And when it comes to that, SanDisk is easily the fastest external drive we’ve tested hands down. There is absolutely no competition. SanDisk wins by a mile.
The box for the drive suggests read speeds of up to 3800MB per second and write speeds of up to 3700MB/s. In our testing with Blackmagic’s disk speed tools, we found transfer speeds of 3400MB/s for both, or just shy of.
Going beyond the benchmark, transferring a little under 100GB of large files from the Mac Studio here at Pickr, we found the entire lot settled in at under two minutes easily (and closer to a minute). That is fast. That is really fast.
Granted, that’s not a Thunderbolt 4 connection of 5000MB/s (translating to the Thunderbolt 4 maximum of 40Gbps) or even a faster Thunderbolt 5, but it’s not bad, either. It’s certainly much faster than most of what we’ve played with prior. And given most Thunderbolt 4 connections will probably come with USB 4 support, it means a fast data connection could already be on your computer as it is.
What does it need?
Thunderbolt would be nice to have, but it’s not a deal breaker. Even the size isn’t a big deal, which is a little bigger than other portable SSDs, but not staggeringly so.
In fact, very little is a deal breaker on the Extreme Pro SSD, what is an otherwise excellent piece of external hardware. It’s something you won’t be able to live without.
There were moments where we didn’t connect at what felt like USB4, with speeds hitting 2000MB/s max as opposed to the near 4000 advertised. That’s not awful, but isn’t a great experience, either. We’re not quite sure why, but this was a bit of a random issue at times.
In short, sometimes you’ll get high-speed USB, and other times, a little less so.
Beyond this, however, it could come with a carabiner clip to go with the hole at the top of the drive, which is sizeable enough to be noticeable in your backpack, but does feel like it’s made to clip onto something. It’s a minor issue, and depending on how many gadgets you own, you might already have a way to clip this drive to your person, or even a backpack.
Is it worth your money?
The only other critical issue is the price, which starting at $589 in Australia for 1TB does make the Extreme Pro SSD quite up there in terms of cost. With fairness to SanDisk, the Extreme Pro USB 4 SSD isn’t that expensive, it just looks like it in comparison to its predecessor.
Locally, the 2TB USB 3.2 edition of the Extreme Pro external SSD can be found for around the $500 mark, while its USB 4 sibling (the model we’re reviewing) is a more costly $899 recommended retail price.
Granted, RRP doesn’t always reflect real world pricing, but near-$1K isn’t exactly cheap for external storage. Look around a bit, and you’ll find the USB4 Extreme Pro can be found locally for around $600, which is a reasonable saving against the RRP.
The problem is speed: the USB 4 edition of the SanDisk Extreme Pro is almost twice the speed of its USB 3 sibling, and that counts for a lot. It’s a difference in seconds, sure, but that can make a serious impact depending on what you’re transferring, and how much of it you’re moving.
Take the file transfers, which show mere second for moving several gigabyte files, but bumps that speed up to minutes when you’re talking about several hundred thousand little files measuring in the gigabytes.
In creative fields, hefty images and large video files are expected, matching the former of these tests; if you’re moving big photos, images, and videos, the SanDisk Extreme Pro SSD will get it done fast.
By comparison, both the Samsung T7 and WD MyPassport SSD models we reviewed a good five years ago run at under one gigabyte per second. They are much, much slower, because a lot has seemingly changed in five years. So much that the technology is now a minimum of three times as fast, provided you can afford it.
Yay or nay?
Backing up regularly is one of those important digital hygiene things that everyone should do more often, but most of us realise we don’t do enough. You’ll probably put it off, and there’s a good reason why: speed. It takes time to back anything up, whether it’s files in the field or files at home.
Backing up is a chore most of us wish could happen in the background, and thanks to the cloud, it just might.
But backing up doesn’t typically happen with big files, because online storage is just too expensive and broadband isn’t as fast as we’d like. Both are getting better gradually, but big files typically stay nearby, rather than hit an online server.
The SanDisk Extreme Pro USB4 SSD may well be the perfect solution for folks with big files and no patience. Built to be sturdy and speedy, it makes backup a breeze. It’s a winner plain and simple. Highly recommended.
