Best 1TB SSDs: Internal and External

Prologix S360 is a solid-state drive from a Ukrainian brand that looks like a 2.5-inch hard drive, so it's great for upgrading laptops. Except that the latest ultrabooks are so thin that a 7 mm thick SSD won't fit in there. It's also a good choice for a second drive for a desktop computer when capacity is more important than speed.

After all, a typical motherboard has only one M.2 slot, but four SATA ports. Prologix S360 overclocks to 530 and 510 MB/s for reading and writing, respectively, which is almost the maximum throughput of the SATA 3 bus. Backward compatibility with older versions of SATA 2 and even SATA 1 is maintained, although the speed will be two and four times lower.

Belongs to the class of so-called Full-Capacity disks, that is, the user has access to the full volume of the drive 1024 gigabytes. While many competitors provide only 960 GB, reserving part of the space for service needs. The difference of 64 gigabytes is quite noticeable: you can install an additional AAA game or download a couple of 4K movies.

Goodram IRDM Pro Nano is a new, even more compact form factor of internal SSDs, only 3 cm long and weighing 35 g. It is primarily intended for portable gaming consoles: Steam Deck, ASUS ROG Ally, Lenovo Legion Go, MSI Claw and others. But it can also be used in some laptops, and can be connected via a magnetic MagSafe adapter to an iPhone.

The brainchild of the Polish company Wilk Elektronik is one of the fastest M.2-2230 solid-state drives. The speeds are almost peak by the standards of the PCI-Express 4.0 x4 interface: up to 7300 MB/s reading and 6000 MB/s writing. Of course, after writing a very large amount of data at once, the volume of the virtual SLC array will be exceeded and the speed will decrease.

All modern SSDs based on TLC flash memory (three bits per cell) operate on a similar principle. The speed can also be regulated by smart thermal throttling to avoid overheating, due to the tight layout of elements on the printed circuit board. A five-year warranty is provided, and the rewriting resource of a one-terabyte model is 600 TB.

Patriot Viper VP4300 Lite is a slightly simplified and pleasantly cheaper version of the original VP4300 model. Instead of the flagship PCIe 4.0 InnoGrit controller, the pre-flagship Maxio is used. It cannot work with a separate operational buffer chip, but it supports HMB technology. Part of the system-wide operational memory is used as a cache.

As a result, the Lite version gives almost the same linear reading and writing speeds of 7400 and 6400 MB/s. And it is only slightly inferior in the speed of random processing of small files in IOPS. But the disk has a significantly lower cost price and less heating, even a thin graphene radiator is enough. This aluminum-carbon alloy has better thermal conductivity.

3D TLC flash memory with 232 layers of semiconductors is combined into a virtual SLC array. After it is full, the disk needs time to rest to restore performance. American company Patriot Memory promises a rewriting resource of as much as 800 TB. That is, during the five warranty years, you can rewrite 40% of the full volume every day.

Transcend ESD410C is an external solid-state drive in a rubberized case, which protects against impacts and falls according to the American military standard MIL-STD-810G and water according to the IPX5 standard. Heavy rain is allowed, but not full immersion in water. In addition to SSD, the range of the Taiwanese company Transcend also includes protected HDDs.

Connects via USB 3.2 Gen2x2 protocol with a theoretical speed of up to 20 Gbps. In practice, it turns out to be about 2000 MB/s for both reading and writing. Similar speed can be achieved via Thunderbolt. In the case of USB 3.2 Gen2 and Gen1, the performance will be limited to 1000 and 500 MB/s. But USB 2.0 will cut the speed to 30 MB/s, which is at the level of a regular flash drive.

It is intended primarily for extreme photographers and videographers who need to store the footage securely, regardless of weather conditions. The declared operating ambient temperature is from 0 to 60 degrees Celsius. The kit comes with two USB cables at once: Type-C for smartphones and Type-A for computers, the speed on both cables is the same.

The Lexar SL500 is a miniature external drive about the size of a bank card, only slightly thicker, about 5 mm. At the same time, it can reach a very large volume of up to 4 TB and a solid read speed of 2000 and write of 1800 MB/s. Only a few laptops and desktop PCs with USB 3.2 Gen2x2, USB4 or Thunderbolt are currently capable of delivering such performance.

And the iPhone 15 Pro can record 4K@60FPS video directly to the disk. In addition to the SSD controller, the disk also has a USB controller, which heats up additionally. This nuance is solved by intelligent thermal throttling. The drive case is made of aluminum, which not only adds strength, but also performs a heat-dissipating function.

The package includes only one two-way Type-C cable. To connect to a smart TV or a stationary gaming console, you may need a Type-A adapter. And reformatting to a file system other than ExFAT. Lexar's proprietary DataShield application encrypts personal files with a 256-bit AES key, which is virtually impossible to crack.