I mostly used it to keep the games I use for benchmarking laptops and PCs. Great if you're looking for a nondescript way to expand your storage. The T7 Shield is compatible with game consoles, too. More practical testing includes transferring nearly 8GBs worth of This Week In PC Gaming clips on and off the drive, which took about 6 seconds each go round.Ĭompared to other external drives, it’s just as fast, if not faster, than some of our favorite external NVMe drives. It has a sequential read-speed of 1021MB/s and a write-speed of 896MB/s, according to our benchmarking. When it comes to external SSDs, especially NVMe-based ones, speed is the name of the game. In fact, the aluminum body covered in a rubber casing has an almost all-weather resistant feel to it. It doesn't feel flimsy when you hold it in your hand or store it in a pocket despite still being pretty light. I also dropped the T7 Shield from standing desk height a few times until I was satisfied with the sound of the thud and used the drive again with no issues. I could open, copy, and transfer files with no performance hit when I retrieved the drive. To test it, I left the SSD on my patio in the rain for a couple of hours since absent-mindedly leaving things outside feels more like a real-world situation I’d end up in. Being rated to IP65 durability, its classified as dustproof and water resistant, meaning it's aimed at content creators who travel and, for whatever reason, might end up a little wet or with a bit of dirt on their person. The T7 Shield is Samsung’s new portable NVMe SSD that’s about as big as a playing card. Each of these entries we've tested thoroughly, putting them through our gauntlet of benchmarks so they could earn their right to store your precious games.

Whatever the size, speed, and price of the external SSD, chances are we've got one that's right for you listed below. You can even run games directly off the SSD itself in most cases, but we understand the dubiousness around the idea.

Some even support 2GB/s of raw bandwidth, so you can transfer huge game files in minutes rather than spending hours staring at that progress bar.Īn external SSD is a more affordable way of gaining more storage for Sony PlayStation 5 (opens in new tab) or Microsoft Xbox Series X (opens in new tab) gaming consoles too. If you're looking for a perfect external SDD, USB Type-C drives (opens in new tab) are top-tier, though overall, the performance of external SSDs has improved a lot in the past years. You want the best external SSD to be speedy and reliable too, if they're going to match the kind of quality we see from the best NVMe SSD (opens in new tab) inside your machine.

Solid state external drive for mac