Image: SanDisk
The SanDisk Extreme and the Sandisk Extreme Pro are a pair of speedy external SSDs that also have the hardware to keep your data safe and secure. The more expensive SanDisk Extreme Pro claims speeds of up to 2000MB/s for both read and write, while the regular SanDisk Extreme offers transfer speeds of up to 1050MB/s read and 1000MB/s write.
This puts the new SanDisk Extreme Pro among some of the fastest drives on the market, without having to put up with the more limited compatibility of a drive that connects over Thunderbolt 3. Tom’s Hardware has already put the 2TB version of the drive through its paces and notes that it delivers “very strong sequential read and write performance” over the latest 20Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 standard, and it even outperformed some Thunderbolt 3 drives in certain workloads.
As well as offering faster data transfer speeds, the drives are also more secure than their predecessors thanks to their included AES 256-bit hardware encryption. That’s up from the software-based 128-bit encryption used in the previous drives, Tom’s Hardware notes. Not only is the security stronger, but it should also lead to less of a hit to performance if you encrypt your data.
In addition to its support for hardware encryption, the drives are also physically protected against danger. They have an IP55 rating for dust and water resistance (which gives them some protection, but don’t go immersing them in water), and SanDisk says the drives should also survive being dropped from up to two meters in height.
Neither the SanDisk Extreme nor the Extreme Pro come particularly cheap, however. The SanDisk Extreme Pro is initially being sold with 2TB of capacity for $499, but the company plans to release a 1TB model later in the year for $300, Tom’s Hardware reports. The regular SanDisk Extreme, meanwhile, is available now with either 1TB and 500GB of storage for $199 and $119, respectively, with a 2TB model following later in the year.