This Samsung portable NVMe drive is faster than your SSD

Samsung has rolled out its very first portable SSD featuring NVMe speeds, the Portable SSD X5.

The Samsung Portable SSD X5 delivers 2,800MB/s read speeds and 2,300MB/s write speeds, all piped over a ThunderBolt 3 USB-C connection that supports up to 40Gbps of bandwidth. That’s much, much faster than Samsung’s last Portable SSD T5, which maxed out at only 462MB/s reads and 323MB/s writes.

According to the South Korean electronics firm, the new portable drive can transfer a 20GB 4K video file in just 12 seconds. Samsung also says users can expect the new drive to be 5.2 times faster than the widely used SATA interface portable SSDs and up to 25.5 times faster than external HDDs.

Samsung Portable SSD X5

Other than incredible transfer speeds, the X5 features a full-metal body and non-slip bottom mat wrapped around a shock-resistant internal frame and rugged metal housing – which, all together can withstand accidental drops of up to two-meters (or 6.6 feet). 

An internal heatsink and Dynamic Thermal Guard technology and a heat sink help the drive from overheating itself. Samsung is also backing up all X5 devices with a three-year limited warranty.

The Samsung Portable SSD X5 will be available starting on September 3rd in three capacities: $399 (about £310, AU$540) for the 500GB model, $699 (about £540, AU$950) for the 1TB model and $1,399 (about £1,085, AU$1,900) for the 2TB model.

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Kevin Lee

Kevin Lee was a former computing reporter at TechRadar. Kevin is now the SEO Updates Editor at IGN based in New York. He handles all of the best of tech buying guides while also dipping his hand in the entertainment and games evergreen content. Kevin has over eight years of experience in the tech and games publications with previous bylines at Polygon, PC World, and more. Outside of work, Kevin is major movie buff of cult and bad films. He also regularly plays flight & space sim and racing games. IRL he's a fan of archery, axe throwing, and board games.