I adore petite cheap external SSDs and here are 50 Black Friday/Cyber Monday portable SSD deals I’d buy from $0.045/GB

External SSDs
(Image credit: Future)

It’s the day after Black Friday and there are still a lot of SSD deals floating around; this time around I am focusing on portable SSDs and I’ve hunted for the best value for money ones as we head to Cyber Monday. I’ve compiled a list of 50 external SSDs in the table below and sorted them out by price per GB.

External SSDs may not be as fast as or as cheap internal SSD but they have significantly dropped in price with the most affordable model costing just under $45 per TB, which is really competitive.

One trend I’ve noticed is that USB flash drives are often passed on as external SSDs and this is something that will most likely continue in the future as economies of scale and rising bill of materials make it easier to manufacture smaller external SSDs that can easily be passed on as USB flash drives.

For my list today, I’ve opted for 1TB or bigger portable SSDs (2, 4 and 8TB) as the smaller capacities no longer make financial sense. I’ve added warranty, speed and capacities as well.

While faster portable SSDs do exist (using either USB 4.0, USB 3.2 Gen2x2, Thunderbolt), do make sure that your systems are compatible.

A word about endurance: while internal SSDs usually publish their endurance numbers (usually in drive or Terabyte written), none of the external SSDs I’ve come across had this information. As such, I would urge anyone looking to use portable SSDs for write-intensive tasks (e.g. CCTV) to do further research.

Kingston XR1000R 2TB USB flash drive
Kingston XR1000R 2TB USB flash drive: $109.99 at Amazon

If I had to buy an external SSD, it would be the 2TB Kingston XS1000R which is significantly cheaper than the competition, has excellent read/write performance, is absurdly small, has a metal body, carries a long warranty and comes from one of the biggest names in data storage.

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Header Cell - Column 0 TBGBpsWarranty (Yrs)$$/GB
Silicon Power MS6010.6544.990.045
Orico M25 Pro10.46352.47180.052
SK hynix Tube T3111559.990.060
Orico11359.990.060
SK hynix Beetle X3111562.990.063
Kingston XS1000R11563.990.064
Crucial X610.8363.990.064
SSK11365.440.065
Sandisk11569.960.070
Netac ZX2012372.790.073
SanDisk Portable SSD10.8574.990.075
Teamgroup C21211579.990.080
Adata SE88012379.990.080
Teamgroup PD2012582.990.083
Orico M2012387.990.088
Kingston XS200012592.990.093
SK hynix Tube T31 (pack of 2)21599.990.050
Kingston XS1000R21.055101.990.051
SanDisk Portable SSD20.85109.850.055
Western Digital Elements SE20.43109.990.055
Teamgroup T-Force M201225109.990.055
SSK213110.490.055
Orico 143111.990.112
Netac ZX20223122.390.061
Silicon Power MS70215124.990.062
Orico M20223125.990.063
Samsung T7215139.990.070
Teamgroup PD20225145.990.073
Kingston XS2000225149.990.075
Samsung T7 Shield215149.990.075
Orico 243159.990.080
Silicon Power40.523205.990.051
Crucial X9415219.990.055
SSK423220.990.055
SanDisk 4TB Extreme Portable SSD415229.990.057
Samsung T7415239.990.060
Lexar Armor 700425264.950.066
Crucial X10 Pro425268.990.067
LaCie Rugged SSD Pro22.85273.110.137
SABRENT Rocket XTRM Plus22.75275.270.138
SanDisk Extreme PRO425279.990.070
Orico 443319.990.080
SanDisk Professional PRO-G40 SSD435324.990.081
Samsung T9425329.990.082
Teamgroup T-Force M200425343.990.086
Oyen Digital U34 Bolt42.834290.107
Samsung T5 Evo80.465429.990.054
Sandisk415449.990.112
Teamgroup T-Force M200825799.990.100
Oyen Digital U34 Bolt82.839890.124

Check out our black friday SSD deal pages for more offers, our main black friday deal page and our best SSD buying guide for the low down on the top deals.

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Desire Athow
Managing Editor, TechRadar Pro

Désiré has been musing and writing about technology during a career spanning four decades. He dabbled in website builders and web hosting when DHTML and frames were in vogue and started narrating about the impact of technology on society just before the start of the Y2K hysteria at the turn of the last millennium.