At CES 2024, Patriot showcased its storage devices ready for 2024, starting with its next-generation PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSDs. However, the company also showed several new external storage drives for 2024, including the portable SSD USB Duo A/C and an interesting prototype called the Portable SSD USB 4.0.
The Portable SSD USB 4 prototype is still a work in progress as there's no casing on it, though Patriot plans to release this drive in 2024. It will use a Realtek 5772DL controller paired with an ASMedia ASM2464 bridge controller and WD BiCS5 NAND chips. This portable USB 4 SSD will be available in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities and is advertised to yield sequential reads up to 3,720 MB/s and writes up to 3,720 MB/s.
Patriot also prepared two other external drives. Being true to its name, the Portable SSD Duo A/C features Type-C and Type-A ports in its casing. The company promises this drive will provide read and write speeds up to 1,000 MB/s and will be available in 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB storage capacities.
The Portable SSD was also marked as a prototype, featuring only a Type-C port and a much higher transfer data speed. In its display, Patriot mentions it provides up to 2,100 MB/s reads and writes up to 1,800 MB/s. It is clear these drives are made for two different user bases- one provides versatile physical compatibility and the other with more performance throughput.
Patriot also provides a Type-C to dual Type A/C cable for the drives, which looks similar to the cable that comes with the Transporter external SSD.
The State of USB 4 External SSDs
We already have PCs and Macs that leverage USB 4, so it is about time we see more manufacturers roll out USB 4 SSD and NVMe enclosures. We tested the ZikeDrive USB 4 enclosure for NVMe SSDs, which provides roughly the same speeds, and there are native USB 4 drives like the Adata SE920.
Portable drives are in high demand due to the need to have mass storage for mobile and handheld devices. This is where the products like the SSD Duo A/C and the Portable SSD fill the void. Unfortunately, pricing and retail availability were not provided by Patriot at CES. Hopefully, we'll learn these details in the coming months as these prototypes give way to production-ready designs.
