Best Solid State Drives from Western Digital/SanDisk
Featuring: SanDisk iXpand Mini, Ultra Dual Drive Type-C, SanDisk Extreme Portable & WD Blue NVMe M.2 SSDs
Today I’m taking a look at a few products from WD (Western Digital). They’re all drives for different scenarios but they all have a couple of things in common.
- They’re made by Western Digital and
- They’re Solid State Drives
So I’ve got a 128GB SanDisk iXpand Mini Flash Drive, another 128GB SanDisk Dual Drive USB Type-C flash drive, a 500GB WD Blue solid state drive and a 500GB SanDisk Extreme portable Solid state drive.
These products have a couple of benefits that they propose and that’s:
- Super fast file copy and transfer
- A really small footprint and
- You can also use them as backup drives for important files.
So give me four minutes of your time to take you through these drives and why they’re totally worth it.
SanDisk iXpand Mini
The iXpand Mini Flash Drive is a flash drive that’s made for the iPhone, iPad and computers; and if you have an OTG dongle, you can also use it on your Android device.
The iXpand Mini has two ends one with a USB A interface and the other end sports a lightning connector. This drive allows for automatic backup of your photos and videos from your phone to the drive.
It also allows you play video files directly from the drive. In my test, it was as simple as connecting the drive to your iPhone, following the instructions to download the iXpand App and then filling the drive with your photos and videos. You can also access the drive files via a file manager app. There was hardly any lags or delay in playing video file directly from the drive and the copy speeds between the phone or computer and the drive was just impressively fast. This is a very tiny drive and you should be able to use this drive with your phone without needing to take off your phone case.
There are 64 and 128 GB options available for purchase
SanDisk Ultra Dual Drive (With USB C)
Next up is the SanDisk Ultra Dual Drive with USB C. Now this flash drive is very similar to the iXpand with the difference being that you have a USB C interface on one end. The Dual Drive is to Android smart-phones what the iXpand is to iPhones and iPads.
You can easily copy files to and from your phone by simply plugging the drive to the USB C port on your device and then accessing the drive via a file manager and If you do not have a USB C port on your phone, not to worry, you can always use an OTG dongle with the USB A interface to manage your files.
The Dual Drive boasts up to a 150MB/s read and write speed and man was it fast. It took me just about 25 seconds to copy a 1.4GB movie file to the drive. Now that’s fast. This drive is very small, even smaller than a double A battery. So it shouldn’t be a hassle to take this around with you. The speeds are also very good and being a solid state drive, your files are also much safer when dropped.
SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD
Next in line is the 500GB SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD. This is a portable external SSD drive and from the feel of the box its really light.
In the box you get the Drive, a safety and warranty card, a USB-C to USB-C data transfer cable and you also get a USB-C to USB-A adapter. And man look at how tiny this thing is. It’s almost unbelievable. It is slightly taller but narrower than a credit card and honestly you can attach this to your key ring. Which is what I’ve done so I have this everywhere I go.
It feels well built, but you’d notice that it isn’t rugged. Its got a very smooth to bottom and a patterned top.
It is IP55 water and dust resistant meaning that it is protected the against quantity of dust that could interfere with the normal operation of the product but is not fully dust tight and that the product is completely protected against solid objects. It is also protected against water jets projected by a nozzle (6.3mm) from any angle. The Extreme portable also has a shock and vibration resistant solid state core up to a 2 meter drop. This means if you drop this from a height of 2 meters pretty much nothing should happen to your data.
It’s got a USB 3.1 Gen-2 type c port and also a type A port for really fast transfers and copy speeds. So to test out the drive I actually edited this video off the extreme portable drive and mans, I had no lag in my timeline. Absolutely impressive stuff.
Read and write speeds top at about 150 to 200MB/s.
500GB WD Blue Solid State Drive
The final drive on my table is the 500GB WD Blue SSD. This is a 3D NAND SATA SSD and this can be used as a PC boot drive for really fast boot ups. I already had an SSD boot drive so I just installed this as a backup drive in my computer.
WD claims the read speeds to be about 560MB/s which was true, I as getting between 520MB and 550MB read speeds. And the write speeds, WD puts at 530MB/s.
These are very fast speed and if you do use this drive as you boot up/windows installation drive, you should be very happy with the results. Installation was as easy as installing an extra memory card in your PC.
Conclusion
So these drive are really impressive and it’s also fascinating how with the advent of Solid state or flash drives, we now get very small footprints with these drives. Western Digital is one of the more trusted brands out there and I can honestly say that these products are of very high quality.
If you’re looking to purchase any one of these drives, do make sure that you’re getting the original product from an approved WD retailer. You’d be getting warranties with your purchase and most importantly you can be sure of a good product to hold your data safely.
I have an extra 128GB SanDisk iXpand Drive and a 128GB SanDisk Ultra Dual Drive to give away but that’s happening on my social media pages. So go follow me on Twitter @henreeneo and Instagram @henreeneo to learn how to enter.
Guys thanks for watching my review on these drives, if you have any questions or would like to know more about them, hit me up in the comment section. Do not forget to like this video and subscribe to the channel if this was helpful.
I’ll leave Links in the video description to where you can pick any one of these drives up.
Thanks for watching and stay safe out there
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