SanDisk Extreme PRO Portable SSD V2, Monterey, 2TB, USB-C 3.2

The earlier SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD quickly found itself part of my workflow thanks to its speed, size and robustness, all of which meant I never had an excuse not to use it. It became my go-to backup when I’m out and about, and a convenient way to boost the storage on my laptop when working on big projects. The newer Extreme Pro v2 provided the same flexibility but with the benefit of faster speeds, and while my own devices meant I only enjoyed half its theoretical performance, it remains the fastest drive I’ve tested. As such unless I expected to buy a computer with a 20Gbit USB port in the future, I’d personally save money and buy a model rated at 1000 Megabyte/s like the Extreme Pro v1 or Extreme v2 instead. But the bottom line here is regardless of model, I’ve come to regard a portable SSD as an essential accessory, and the SanDisk range provides an ever-growing choice of speeds, capacities and price. Buy the one that best matches your needs, but check the specs of the drive and your ports carefully.

Far for us, it has worked extremely well. We did not get the chance to test this drive for many months so longer-term retention is always a question. It tests slightly better than both the Samsung T9 and Crucial X10 Pro in most benchmarks. That larger physical size may not seem significant, but it will end up being important when we need more bag space. There is a notable gap between the 10Gbps class and 20Gbps class drives when it comes to performance and this drive is on the right side of that gap.

The preceding sections took a detailed look at two 4TB external SSDs - the SanDisk Extreme PRO Portable SSD v2 focusing on no-holds barred performance, and the Crucial X6 Portable SSD targeting the mainstream market with affordability as its primary focus.