MYTH BUSTED! Best M1 Mac SSD | Performance Tests

there are myths spreading around about the m1 max and external ssd performance apple charges a premium for ssd upgrades on the m1 max and these drives can't be upgraded later on which leaves you with a tough choice because you want that better performance and yet you know money rather than upgrading the internal storage you may want to get a less expensive external ssd which still gives you outstanding performance and saves you money i picked six drives at different price points and i ran them through several tests both software-based and actual use and i also did a comparison with the internal ssd now what i notice is that there's a significant difference in performance between the various options so i'm going to help you get past the numbers and pick a great ssd for your needs and budgets let's very quickly look at the drives starting with the pioneer aps xs-03 it's a small and light drive and it's the least expensive one on the list at 98 now one of the things that turns me off about this drive is that it uses a usb 3.1 micro b10 pin connector that's a long way of saying that it's that funny usb cable that you never have lying around and pioneer reports a maximum speed of 400 megabytes per second next we've got the pny pro elite it's shorter than the aps xs03 but it's also a little wider it's compatible with usb 3.1 type a and type c ports pny reports 890 megabytes per second read and 900 megabytes per second write speeds and the one terabyte version costs 126 dollars and the next drive i chose is the samsung t7 which is longer than the pny pro elite but thinner now samsung reports transfer speeds of up to 1050 megabytes per second it's compatible with usb 3.1 gen 2 and the one terabyte version costs 150 bucks now another drive at the same price point is the sandisk extreme pro it's bigger than the samsung t7 but it has a more rugged design with a forged aluminum body plus a silicon rubber coating that gives it an ip55 rating for water and dust resistance the sandisk reports 1050 megabytes per second transfer speeds and as i mentioned this drive is also 150 bucks for the one terabyte version now next on the list is the cal digit tough nano it's shorter but thicker than the sandisk extreme pro and it has an ip67 rating that means that unlike the sandisk drive which is partially protected against dust and is protected against low pressure water jets the tough nano is totally dust tight and it could be fully submerged in water at depths of up to three feet for up to 30 minutes i'm not going to try that but it's supposed to be able to handle that the reported transfer speeds again are 1050 megabytes per second the tough nano is compatible with thunderbolt 3 usbc usba and usb4 ports and the one terabyte version is 220 now the last drive is definitely unique and this is the owc envoy pro ex and it's clearly much larger than any of the other drives on this list and it's the most expensive now it offers military standard 810g protection from drops has reported max speeds of 2 800 megabytes per second so by far the fastest on this list and the one terabyte version costs 300 bucks all right now that we have our contenders let's see how they performed at each of my tests the first test is the black magic disc speed test which will show us read and write speed as far as read speeds performance pretty much aligned with price with a few notable exceptions the sandisk outperformed the t7 even at the same price point and even edged out the more expensive cal digit tough nano now take a look at that owc envoy pro which absolutely crushed the competition and provided similar speeds to the internal drive for write speeds again performance was closely related to price with the sandisk extreme pro outperforming the t7 and the cal digit tough nano for the second time we see the envoy pro ex almost matching the speed on the internal drive which is insanely fast now moving on to my next test i wanted to compare sequential and random read and write speeds sequential speeds are what you would expect when copying or moving large files this is the best performance you're going to get from your ssd a random speeds on the other hand are what you would expect when you're working with complex programs to deal with a lot of smaller files the test iran uses thousands of 32 kilobyte files to test this type of performance and this is the lowest performance you should expect from your ssd now starting with read sequential performance aligned perfectly with cost and as you went up in price we see that speeds improve all the way up to the owc envoy pro ex with an impressive 2667 megabytes per second now with write sequential we see that the cal digit was outperformed by both the sandisk extreme pro and the samsung t7 and between those the sandisk came out on top this is definitely an area where we also see a major difference between the pioneer and the pny now moving on to the read random the pny t7 and sandisk drives outperformed the cal digit tough nano and every drive was well ahead of the pioneer finally on the right random test the sandisk stood out in the middle of the pack outperforming every drive and getting very close to the owc now the next test i performed was more of a real life test so i created a 10 gigabyte file and then i tested speeds by copying it from the internal drive into each of these drives and then from each of these drives back onto the internal drive now unlike the previous test these results are shown in seconds so the actual time it took to transfer to complete like i said i started out by copying the 10 gigabyte file from the computer onto each one of these drives the pioneer aps xs03 was the slowest at 29.23 seconds followed by the pny elite pro at 28.14 the samsung t7 at 16.1 the cal digit tough nano at 15.5 sandisk extreme pro at 13.07 and the owc envoy pro ex at a blazing 7.1 seconds now next i copy the file from each ssd back onto the internal storage here speeds lined up nicely with price with the pioneer aps xs03 being the slowest at 29.34 seconds followed by the pny elite pro at 20.08 the sandisk extreme pro at 16.24 samsung t7 at 16.23 cal digit tough nano at 16.06 and the owc envoy pro ex crushing everyone by a mile at 6.03 seconds now let's get to the conclusion and if you're still with me and i've gotten value from this video give it a thumbs up it lets me know what kind of content you like so that i can make more of it and i see that over 90 of you are new viewers so hit that subscribe button picking the right ssd comes down to what tasks you'll be performing and how much you're willing to spend on faster speeds the owc envoy pro ex was by far the fastest ssd that i tested and it almost matched the speeds of the internal drive when comparing the three hundred dollars for the one terabyte to the 400 bucks it would cost to upgrade a m1 mac mini macbook air or macbook pro from the included 256 gigs to one terabyte you're paying 33 less and you're getting 25 more storage with the envoy pro ex so if you want that next level performance plus the additional versatility of sharing a drive between different devices this is an excellent option my only concern about this drive is that the thunderbolt 3 cable is attached so if anything were to happen to it you wouldn't be able to simply get another cable and use it i've never had this type of cable actually get damaged and i like the fact that it's connected because i never lose or forget it so i still use this as my main external drive now if you're looking at the middle of the pack the sandisk extreme pro and the samsung t7 offered outstanding value and i would go with the cal digit drive if you wanted the ip67 level of protection now between the lowest two it's a tougher choice because there wasn't always a significant difference in performance and if you're going to pay 126 bucks for the pny elite pro you might as well save a couple of extra bucks and then pick up the t7 or the sandisk extreme pro remember that i have links in the description to all the products that i talked about hopefully this video was helpful click on my face to subscribe and then watch one of these videos you know what i always say buy it nice or buy twice good luck and see you soon

Channel: Tech Gear Talk

Views: 251,262

Keywords: M1 Mac SSD, M1 Mac Mini SSD, M1 Macbook Air SSD, M1 Macbook Pro SSD, M1 Mac SSD Upgrade, M1 Mac Mini SSD Upgrade, M1 Macbook Air SSD Upgrade, M1 Macbook Pro SSD Upgrade, How to upgrade M1 Mac SSD, Best M1 Mac SSD, Best M1 Mac Mini SSD, Best M1 Macbook Air SSD, Best M1 Macbook Pro SSD, m1 mac ssd wear, m1 mac ssd speed test, m1 mac ssd issue, m1 mac ssd drive

Id: MhKd1pGWF-Q

Length: 9min 7sec (547 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 02 2021