Patriot Memory PXD PXD1TBPEC 1 TB

flash drive on steroids

Patriot PXD is an external high-speed solid state drive in an aluminium case. Metal not only makes the device elegant in appearance and pleasant to the touch, but also contributes to cooling. Inside, there is an M.2 SSD with a PCI-E 3.0 x4 controller. Given the limited bandwidth of the USB 3.1 Gen 2 interface in megabytes per second, an x2 controller would be enough. But still, x4 significantly increases performance in IOPS (input-output operations per second).

Two cables are better

The Patriot PXD comes with two replacement cables. The first is with miniature USB Type-C swivel connectors on both ends for connecting to Apple Macbooks, Windows ultrabooks, smartphones or tablets. And the second is a USB Type-C to large Type-A adapter for desktop PCs, most laptops and, most importantly, PlayStation and Xbox game consoles (games can be run directly from an external drive).

Honorary thousand

With a theoretical USB 3.1 Gen 2 bandwidth of 1 Gbps, in fact the Patriot PXD delivers 1000 Mbps of both sequential reads and writes. Moreover, this speed is confirmed by both popular benchmarks: Crystal Disk and ATTO (whereas many competing SSDs guarantee high speed only in one of the above tests). By the way, Patriot has an even faster external SSD — EVLVR with Thunderbolt interface (1600 MB / s).

Doesn't weigh down the backpack

The Patriot PXD, like the vast majority of modern SSDs, is built on the basis of multi-bit flash memory (TLC or QLC), so when writing very large amounts of data at a time, the speed may sag a little. After that, the disk needs time to rest in order to restore its original performance. The Patriot PXD weighs just 35 grams, but if you're looking for an even lighter external drive, check out the 400MB/s Viper Fang USB Flash Drive.