
SSD costs have crashed over the course of the final 12 months following a glut in demand, and that is excellent news in case you’re seeking to purchase a transportable drive. There’s loads of choices out there on this phase, however the drive that I used loads in latest weeks is the Essential X9 Professional, and it has been terrific.
Essential is owned by Micron, and it’s the solely model aside from Samsung to make all of its {hardware} in-house. That offers the X9 Professional a definite edge over different transportable SSDs, and as an added incentive, the 4TB mannequin is now promoting for simply $182 as a part of Black Friday financial savings. You simply get a greater take care of the 4TB mannequin; in case you do not want that a lot storage, the 1TB drive is listed at $59, and the 2TB mannequin goes for $109. However if you wish to maximize worth, the 4TB X9 Professional is the best way to go.
The X9 Professional delivers every thing you want in a transportable SSD in 2023. It has a rugged design and is drop-proof as much as 7.5 ft, you get IP55 mud and water resistance, and it has 256-bit AES {hardware} encryption by default. The drive connects over USB 3.2 Gen 2, and also you get a brief USB-C to USB-C cable within the field that allows you to join the X9 Professional to your telephone or pocket book with ease. I’d’ve favored a USB-A cable as effectively, however in my use case, the USB-C cable did the job.
There are many nice transportable SSDs available in the market in the present day, however the X9 Professional differentiates itself on the efficiency entrance. The drive is touted with reads and writes of 1,050MB/s, and my testing delivered outcomes near that determine. It hit reads of 980MB/s and writes of 906MB/s in CrystalDiskMark’s assessments, and that is among the many quickest of current-gen USB 3.2-based transportable SSDs.
Basically, the X9 Professional provides a design that is constructed to final, and efficiency that is among the many greatest on this class. Throw in a beneficiant guarantee that extends to 5 years, and you’ve got a fantastic general bundle that ticks all the fitting bins. The 4TB mannequin comes out to only $45.5 per terabyte, versus $59 for the 1TB model, and $54.5 for the 2TB variant.
So in case you’re eyeing a transportable SSD and wish one thing that goes as much as 4TB, it is best to choose up the Essential X9 Professional whereas it is on sale at $182. It undercuts Samsung whereas delivering the identical degree of efficiency, and that is an enormous deal.