Performance and Conclusion
Moving on over to more general tests, we continue to see the manifest improvement over the older drive. It's debatable whether they can run faster if outfitted with the same USB 3.2 Gen-2 interface present here, but it's a moot point as they feature USB 3.2 Gen-1 which tops out at 5Gbps (circa-500MB/s in real-world tests).
Trying a more difficult test by moving a 93.8GB folder comprised of over 20,000 files ranging between 1KB and 6.9GB from the host Corsair Force Series MP600 2TB drive over to our two protagonists, the My Passport SSD 1TB completes the task over two minutes quicker.
Under prolonged load the internal temperature peaks at 55°C - which is very much on the safe side for SSDs - and results in the aluminium chassis becoming only mildly warm to the touch
Summary
...Performance is tasty enough to hit the GB/s barrier in large-file reads and get close to it on writes.The latest iterations of portable external storage have moved the performance needle to the right by taking advantage of faster NVMe-based SSDs connected via USB 3.2 Gen-2 Type-C. A good example is this year's WD My Passport SSD that's currently shipping in 500GB and 1TB flavours with a 2TB model to follow.
Performance is tasty enough to hit the GB/s barrier in large-file reads and get close to it on writes, representing about 2x the performance of older SSD-based USB drives. It's also very portable, naturally has access to WD's array of utilities, and will be available in different colours in due course.
It would be nice to have a longer Type-C cable in the box, a fingerprint-reader option would keep up with the Samsungs of this world, yet the biggest stumbling block is price. The recommended price of £222 for the reviewed 1TB model is at odds with the £175 for the rival Samsung T7 and also substantially higher than the ($190 ex tax, ~£175 inc. VAT) for the same drive over the pond.
Overall, the WD My Passport SSD (2020) 1TB is a supremely fast external drive that, in the UK at least, is compromised by an uncompetitive street price. Technically excellent, it would make far more sense at £175 or so.
Blistering speeds
USB Type-C and Type-A
Five-year warranty as standard
USB Type-C cable rather short
WD My Passport SSD (2020) 1TB
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The WD My Passport SSD 1TB is available from wd.com.
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At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.
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