G-Technology G-Drive mobile Pro SSD Review: The New Thunderbolt 3 SSD Champ
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Conclusion
With speeds of 2.8GB/s read and up to 2.4GB/s write, the G-Technology G-Drive mobile Pro SSD is a very capable portable SSD that can transfer a terabyte of data in just 7 minutes. That makes it an excellent choice for professional 4K, 8K, and VR media editing.
The drive consistently trades blows with, and even beats, the Samsung X5 that previously held the crown of the fastest external SSD to cross our test bench. The drive even stayed cool during our demanding benchmarks, which is important to maintain a high level of performance during extended use. It even outpaced the X5 during the PCMark 8 Storage test by almost 100MB/s.
Large media files whiz quickly to and from the G-Drive mobile Pro SSD, but smaller files are a little more challenging. The only time the G-Drive let up was when we threw our 25GB folder of documents at it. During this test, the Samsung X5 beat it out by more than 260MB/s. That's something to keep in mind if you plan to use the drive for anything other than media editing. It also doesn’t support hardware-based data encryption like the X5, either.
G-Technology designed the G-Drive mobile Pro for professional users, so it comes with the price tag to match the prestige. The $300 price tag for the 500GB model and $600 asking price for the 1TB can be a real shocker to most consumers, especially considering a standard 1TB WD Black NVMe M.2 SSD goes for a just bit over $200. Most 1TB SATA SSDs also retail for less than $150. Bear in mind that there aren't many bare external Thunderbolt 3 enclosures available, so it would be challenging to create a similar do-it-yourself package for less money.
Should you get the G-Technology G-Drive mobile Pro SSD? If you regularly edit media files, we believe so. It’s sleek, it’s durable, and it’s optimized for multi-stream workflows. It eats through video faster than an HDD RAID array and is small and lightweight enough to carry in your pocket. If you need to speed up your workflow and you’ve grown tired of slower SSDs and HDDs for your day-to-day editing, the G-Drive mobile Pro SSD is a solid option.
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Sean is a Contributing Editor at Tom’s Hardware US, covering storage hardware.
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AnimeMania I am not in the industry myself, but are these drives really useful to high resolution media editors. I understand they have the speed, but do they have the capacity. Can anyone tell me if they are useful to high resolution media editors, and if not, what areas they might be beneficial to.Reply -
spentshells Wake me up at 4tb capacity. 1 TB for a pro moving lots of footage studio to studio isnt exactly helpful on large scale projects.Reply