7 Excellent Portable SSDs to Hold All Your Digital Junk

by Unknown on November 13, 2019 in TECH

A hand holding a Samsung T5 portable SSD. — Samsung

Portable solid-state drives (or SSDs) are faster and more flexible than traditional hard drives, which makes them perfect for creative projects, IT work, or home computing hobbies. But how do you buy the SSD that will best suit your needs?

New SSDs come in all shapes and sizes. They sport a dizzying array of data transfer rates and utilize new technology, like Thunderbolt 3, that will benefit some people. So, we’ve rounded up our favorite portable SSDs to take a look at their features and help you find the one that’s best for you.

Before You Buy

If you don’t quite know what you’re looking for, shopping for a portable SSD can be overwhelming.

However, there are really only four things you have to look for, and they’re pretty dang straightforward:

Speed: SSDs are fast! If you want to get the best possible speeds, make sure you choose one with a Thunderbolt 3 port. Your computer also has to have a Thunderbolt 3 port, though, so double-check.
Size: Solid-state storage comes in virtually any shape or size. So, if you want a small SSD, get one! The tiny form factor shouldn’t reduce the drive’s speed or capacity.
Durability: SSDs aren’t easy to break. If you’re concerned about durability, though, we suggest you choose one with a decent IPX rating (only a handful of the SSDs in this article have these).
Capacity: High-capacity SSDs are super-fast, so they’re perfect for migrating user data or running virtual machines. They’re also very extremely super-duper expensive. If you just want a huge portable drive and don’t care about speed, you might want to skip an SSD in favor of a less expensive HDD, or cloud storage, like Dropbox or Google Drive.

Now that you know what to look for, it’s time to get into it. Here are our favorite portable SSDs, along with information about their speed, size, durability, and capacity.

Best Overall: Samsung T5

The Samsung T5 is an incredibly popular external SSD that actually lives up to the hype. At just three inches long, it’s one of the smallest portable SSDs on the market. The small form factor doesn’t lead to any caveats, though. The T5 has a fantastic 540 MBps transfer rate, built-in encryption software, and a surprisingly reasonable price tag.

You can buy the T5 with a 500 GB, 1 TB, or 2 TB capacity. Samsung used to sell a 250 GB model, but it seems to have gone out of production.

Best Overall