WD - P50 1TB External USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 Portable SSD - Black

This device is getting great performance connected to my Asus G15 Strix Advantage Edition laptop. The highest throughput my laptop has is USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C. This SSD achieved the appropriate speed for that particular throughput at approximately 1,000+ Read & 900+ Write Speeds. In order to hit the 2,000 Read speeds, you will need a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 computer or device, which there aren't many at the moment. Just know that when you purchase it. I can easily game with the external drive without issues. Just understand that the device is formatted for exFAT in order to be compatible with Windows, MAC and consoles. If you are only going to be using the drive on a Windows machine, you may want to reformat to NTFS. When placing PC files on the drive, your file size will likely be much much larger than the native file because of how the exFAT formats files. For example, my PC game with a total file size of a little less than 6GB took approximately 45GB of space because the particular game has a lot of little files. It really surprised me when I observed this the first time and had to read about why it occurred. Just trying to help you in case you experience something similar. I may reformat to NTFS since this drive will primarily be for my Windows gaming computer. The device looks great, is really fast, silent and doesn't get too hot. Just know the proper speeds you should be getting through your particular throughput device and consider the above drive formats. Anyhow, I think you will really like this device and it comes with a 5 year warranty for peace of mind.

This little drive is incredibly fast! I’m a professional digital artist with tons of content and late 2014 Mac Mini desktop computer which is already laden with tons of Adobe and Microsoft Office software. I did upgrade so an EVO SSD (1 tb) but still with well over 500 gigs of content I was beginning to experience some lag. I dumped it all onto this ssd the other day and it took only 18 minutes! (despite this computer having only the now somewhat outdated usb 3.0 ports) Bravo! What a great little external!

Wow, just wow. I am amazed such a thing exists with such raw speed. Keep in mind, this drive is designed as a gaming hard drive for fast load times but I am sure other users can put this bad boy to great use if you require an extremely fast (20 gbps) and reliable hard drive. I tried this review on a few computers to test performance… the test computers were a 2019 MacBook Pro 15 which supports USB-C 3.1 Gen 2, a 2018 Alienware R7 which also supports 3.1 Gen 2, and an Xbox One X at USB 3.0. I thought I had a device which supports the full 3.2 2x2 speeds but with all the USB rebranding it appears my devices that are 3.1 gen 2 which is now USB 3.2 gen 2 which is extremely confusing. So as a result my devices support a max of 10 gbps. I am not sure there are any motherboards on market which currently support 2x2 speeds of 20 gbps as all vendors I researched only show the 10gbps cap even for most custom builds I could find. Unboxing: This hard drive comes in a small box which has shows the actual size of the product. The interior contains the hard drive, a USB-C to C cable, a USB-A to C cable and warranty documentation. Build quality: The durability of this product is second to none. It is not designed for portability but appears to be designed to remain stationary. I am not saying you couldn’t carry it around but most of the portable types of these drives are sealed shut, this WD Black SSD appears to have little vents on the bottom to keep it cool. It is made out of metal and feels tough as can be with ridges and WD Black branding on the top. It simply looks cool next to your PC. The USB cables are a little short and on my desktops the hard drive was kind of hanging a little bit, luckily I had a longer Thunderbolt 3 cable sitting around which supported the full speeds needed. So I used that most of the time. Use: No setup is needed. I first tried it on my MacBook Pro which supports USB 3.1 gen 2. I used Black Magic to benchmark and initially got speeds of 952 MB/s write and 926.8 read. I was blown away already being able to transfer 8 GB files in just over 8 seconds. My initial thoughts were that this is going to be a game changer for transferring videos and RAW photos being able to use it to work off of exclusively… but I remembered it is designed for gaming so moved toward that. I installed it to my Alienware PC which supported similar USB speeds, I only got about 850 MB/s on the PC using Crystaldiskbench for some reason with the same USB 3.1 gen 2 support, but it was nothing to scoff at. After transferring Overwatch, Jedi Fallen Order, Doom Eternal and a few other games I gave it a shot. Overwatch ran smooth as can be with no loading stutters at all. The game loaded quickly but loading a level is hard to judge since there are often waiting rooms when getting into a game. Jedi the Fallen Order had similar issues since most of the loading times are integrated into cutscenes with dialog so it is hard to say if speeds were faster, but it again ran quickly and smooth. Doom eternal had noticeably quicker loading times overall. I later tried a game with huge loading times, Star Wars Battlefront II and Battlefield V. Times were still long but to me it felt like they were at least halved in comparison to the old SATA SSD they were loaded on. The drive is kind of overkill when installed on and Xbox One X. It appears it only supports USB 3.0 so it’s speed is greatly limited. You will not see drastic speed differences but loading times will be decreased. I did not see drastically different load times from my other PC I tried the games on but it was still far better than the original setup I had. I think a large limitation is the game design itself as most games integrate times for loading into the gameplay such as elevators, long hallways, slow moving dialog scenes, etc. Once these speeds are more common place perhaps games will adapt to it. If nothing else, you can be certain that game elements will load quickly, there will be no stutter when textures are cached and so on. Summary: This is a must have device for any gamer. Most computers are not able to take advantage of these speeds yet and there are no consoles ready for its ability yet. Next gen consoles like the Xbox One Series X and PS5 should support high speed interfaces so it is great for future proofing. If you have a brand new PC that supports USB 3.2 you are in for an amazing treat. Most high end PCs support 3.1 gen 2 right now and this will still give you amazing speeds (just be sure to use the right port, some are slower than others on PCs). Overall, this hard drive is worth the purchase if you are or are not a gamer. It has great potential for gamers and can be game changer for video / photo editing professionals.

Bought this drive and you really can tell a difference between this and a hdd on your Ps5. Launches games quicker. Download speeds depend on your internet not the drive. The drive has a wicked read and write speed

If you buy a PS5 and want to keep your PS4 games stored then do yourself a favor and grab this ssd also. The speeds with this are ridanculous just like the PS5.

Note: The unit I received had a faulty or underspec'd USB A to C cable that greatly reduced speeds to USB 2.0 speeds. I was able to troubleshoot and find this was a faulty cable, so this did not factor into my score, but it is something other buyers should be aware of. Now that the disclaimer is out of the way, I can say this drive is an absolute beast at a great price. Not only does it look awesome with its hacker Area-51 text and rugged Ammo Crate design, the metal chassis seems to help keep it cool and also protects it. The USB 3.2 2x2 speeds right now are aspirational because so few platforms support it now, but you've got headroom to spare in the future with up to 2GB/s transfer speeds. The USB 3.2 Gen 2 speeds do hit the advertised 10Gbps speeds and roughly 900MB/s speeds. Quick primer for those who are confused, through no fault of your own since the USB spec has been a mess the last few years: USB 3.2 Gen 1 = 5Gbps = roughly 500MB/s max throughput (Consoles and PCs ~5 years old) USB 3.2 Gen 2 = 10Gbps = roughly 1TB/s max throughput (PCs for last 3 years) USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 = 20Gbps = roughly 2TB/s max throughput (Z490 Intel PCs and Next-gen PS5/XBox Series X, maybe) Bottomline is most people buying this drive rightly now will only see 10Gbps or ~900MB/s speeds right now, but that will change later this year and in the future. Without boring you with screenshots and numbers, the P50 was able to accomplish this max throughput *BUT* only with my USB-C connector on my Z370-based desktop, i7-8750H laptop, and Surface Laptop 3. With the USB-A to USB-C connector, I was actually getting only USB 2.0 speeds. I swapped the cable with other SSD drives I had like the Sammy T3 just to make sure I wasn't crazy, and lo and behold, same speeds as with USB-C cable. So I will let WD know they potentially have a faulty cable shipping with this drive, maybe not enough pin connectors. Anyways, I highly recommend this drive for anyone who needs extra storage on their PC or their console, but keep in mind, it will only be as fast as the device it is connected to. I can't wait to use this for the next-gen consoles which I do think will be able to hit the full 2GB/s speeds.

I will just start by saying that from the price to the build quality to the performance, this drive obviously does not reflect your average portable drive. This drive is meant for the dedicated content creation professional or hardcore gamer, someone who demands top performance out of their equipment. In my opinion console users should skip; I fully detail why below. My test platform for this drive was my custom gaming and content creation PC with a 2019 Asus ROG STRIX Z390-E GAMING motherboard with a USB 3.1 Gen 1 USB-C connection. Thus, I did not even come close to the 2000MB/s read/write speeds this drive can achieve through a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 interface. With my USB 3.1 Geb 1 interface, according to CrystalDiskMark7 I achieved a SEQ1M write speed of 1061MB/s and a write speed of 1019MB/s. What this means is that the bottleneck to achieving the top advertised speeds of this drive is my USB 3.1 Gen 1 interface and not the drive! I also tested the read/write speed of this drive over a USB 3.0 connection using the included USB-C to USB-A cable and had a read of 464MB/s and write of 465MB/s, once again demonstrating the bottleneck is in the connection and not the drive. Another test I performed was the copying of a 10GB folder from my Crucial P1 NVMe M.2 SSD drive in my computer to the WD P50 drive via the USB-A 3.0 and USB-C 3.1 Gen 1 connections I have available. Via USB-A 3.0, the drive copied the folder over at a sustained average rate of 340MB/s with no dips and over USB-C 3.1 Gen 1, I had a sustained average transfer rate of nearly double USB-A 3.0 at 600MB/s with no dips. The summary of all of this is basically that this drive is going to absolutely knock the socks off any tasks that you throw at it for the average use case and with the connection via USB 3.2 Gen 2x2, this thing is going to be as blazing fast as an average NVMe SSD connected to a motherboard via M.2 connection. All the numbers aside, the build quality of the drive itself is just incredibly high level. The WD Black series from Western Digital is something I have come to associate with high quality in general, and this drive continues to prove that. It is encased in a forged aluminum cover and to touch feels well-regulated in its temperature with sustained transfers during my testing. It has the toughness that would have me feeling secure about tossing it into my backpack and heading to the coffee shop without concern for its integrity. Furthermore, being an SSD, this drive has no moving parts unlike a standard portable HDD and thus will be even further suited to portability. For my use case, this is going to be a backup drive to my main drive on my gaming PC and will be partitioned for some of my photo and video editing projects and as a secondary Steam library folder for my games where load times are important (like Fallout 4, lol). The only thing I will say in way of consideration for the buyer is that this drive CAN be used by current gen console users, but that doesn’t mean it SHOULD as a first or top choice. The problem is that current gen consoles like the PS4 and Xbox One X are not going to even come close to getting the full use out of this drive due to bottlenecking by the consoles’ USB-A connection interface. Thus, the money would likely be wasted here for most console gamers looking for expandability for their console game libraries. Console gamers would be better off with a larger portable hard drive like a WD Easystore or something along those lines. When the new consoles like the PS5 and Xbox Series X come out in 2020-2021, however, there might be justification for use of higher end portable SSDs like this WD Black P50 for library expansion since the read/write speeds won’t be as bottlenecked by the console/connection interface. Overall, I am incredibly impressed with this drive and I cannot recommend it enough if this is something you are in the market for a high-end Windows PC or Apple PC. Hope this review helped you out and thanks for reading.

I really like the ssd. Id say get it if you can afford it.