EXTERNAL SSDs

Get up to speed with speedy external drives that let you carry your files around in style

- By Jacob Fox

They might not be as flashy as graphics cards or gaming keyboards, but like a samurai's katana, a good, reliable external SSD can become an extension of yourself. And there are more uses for one than you might initially think.

The most obvious use for an external drive is to take your big files around with you. But they're also great to use as portable game library storage for handhelds and laptops. And even if you rarely travel, they can be useful for the occasional system backup or pre-Windows reinstall file backup.

They're not all similarly square, unassuming, nononsense external SSDs these days, either. In this group test we're looking at everything from such options to extravagant press-to-expand glass cannons and dinky keychain drives. And as you'll see from my testing, there's a lot of variability in performance, too.

X9 2 TB CRUCIAL $110

Budget boss

After months of gradual price drops, the Crucial X9 is now a fantastic budget option. Sure, it's designed for an older USB 3.2 Gen 2x1 spec, but far more people will have USB ports running at this spec than faster ones, so it should be good enough for most, which is exactly what you want out of a budget drive.

Consistency is arguably just as important as maximum speed, anyway, and in this regard the X9 shines. In my testing I found it maintains 960+ MB/s speeds for over six minutes before speeds drop, which equals over 300 GB of data transferred in that time—more than enough for most purposes. It also works well as a drive to run games off, but you'll get slightly faster loading times out of a faster drive if you have the USB port to support it.