Kingston Dual Portable SSD - Review
In the world of accessories, most people tend to move towards keyboards or headsets and we are certainly guilty of that here. But there is another level of accessories that most people overlook, things like cables, hubs and of course storage. External storage mediums are nothing new, but the Kingston Dual Portable SSD is, the fact that it comes with a staggering 2TB of storage built in, is just crazy. Is this device crazy good, or crazy bad?
When Kingston sent through the first photos of the device, I assumed that even though it looked small, it would actually be larger than a normal USB stick, simply due to that 2TB storage. I was wrong, it is about the same size as an average stick, coming in at just over 7cm in length, so assumption one was proven incorrect. The other assumption I had, based on the photos was that it would be slow, devices that tend to offer both USB-A and USB-C connections, generally offer lower speeds, but this was not the case either. Are the speeds insanely fast, no they are not, but at a read speed of 1,050MB/s Read and a write speed of 950MB/s, it gets the job done for sure. Ok, so it is small, has storage to spare and has decent speeds, so what does that actually mean?
Well, in my testing, I threw a few things at it. The first thing I wanted to test was how well it would go handling a small video file, well I say small but it was a few Gigabytes. It transferred over pretty easily and then when I plugged it into my iPhone, after downloading VLC, it played without issue. I was also reviewing an Alienware laptop while this turned up, more on that soon, so I figured I would use it to transfer a game or two to the machine from Steam. The first game I selected was Battlefield 6, which comes in at a nice 106GB, at least for now and with that 950MB/s write speed, I was hoping it would not take too long to copy to the stick. I was write, in fact it copied all off that 106GB in just over 8 minutes, accounting for the time that Windows is Windows. Taking from the stick to the laptop, which took a little bit less, just under 7 minutes. In both directions, it was insanely fast and I figured that it could do no wrong, well that was another assumption I was about to be disproven about.
The only major issue that I encountered with the stick was the heat, transferring over 100GB to and from within the space of 15 minutes, left the stick quite warm. This was not to the point that I could not hold it, more like a cup of tea that has been sitting for 5 minutes or so. The heat did dissipate really quickly, within a few minutes of it not being plugged in, it was cold again, but it can get quite warm, quite fast. I was tempted to see how well it would go, if I tried to play Battlefield 6 directly from it, treating it like a hard drive, but Kingston highly advised against that, so I did not try.
In the end, I have developed a fondness for this little stick. It’s storage capacity alone is crazy, but the speed at which it lets you transfer files is just as impressive. In an age where every company is charging more and more for cloud storage, having an offline version is the best long-term option and this will cover you for a lot of use. While heat could be concerning if you left it plugged in for a week or some other extended period of use, general use is fine. If you need a storage solution for your everyday needs, then this will certainly have you covered.
The Score
8.0
Review unit provided by Kingston
The Pros
Insane amount of storage, in such a tiny form
Having both USB connections makes it a vastly more versatile device
The Cons
While labelled as a SSD, it is not advised to be used for a number of things some SSDs are designed for
The heat does build up quite quickly, but it does cool down just as fast
