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- Super compact
- Built-in connectors
- Decent levels of speed
- Plastic caps feel a bit cheap
- Expensive
External storage drives should remain an essential part of your technological toolkit, despite the prevalence of fast wireless connections and point-to-point sharing tech like AirDrop. When transferring large files over wireless connections fails or is just too slow, a boring old external SSD can become a lifesaver – and Kingston’s Dual Portable SSD is probably the most useful external storage drive I have come across.
Not only does it pack a healthy 2TB of storage into a thumbdrive-sized package but it also includes integrated USB-C and USB-A connectors on each end, enabling quick, easy connection to any device you happen to have on hand. I’ve used it to transfer large video files back and forth between my iPhone and Windows laptops, install large benchmark installations and save Steam game images on all sorts of machines over the past few months. It’s a piece of hardware that I just couldn’t do without.
What do you get for the money?
The Kingston Dual Portable SSD 2TB is expensive (around £315 at the time of writing) but it doesn’t come with anything in the way of extras. You get the stick in the box with its dual connectors, one at each end, and two plastic caps – and that’s it. There’s nothing special about the design and build of the device: it’s clad in anodised red aluminium with the Kingston logo at one end and 2TB at the other; handsome enough but unassuming.
The impressive part is how quick this is compared with your average USB stick. Connect it via either the USB-C or USB-A connector and you’ll get up to USB 3.2 Gen 2 speeds, which means files transfer at a maximum of 1,050MB/sec (megabytes per second) while reading them from the stick and 950MB/sec while writing them to it.
What did we like about it?
My favourite thing about this drive, though, is the sheer convenience. The ability to have something like this tucked away in a wallet or pocket with more storage capacity than the average premium laptop is seriously useful. Pop it in your phone and you can pull off even large video files in a matter of seconds and the same goes for pretty much any laptop or peripheral. It’s great as an emergency transfer medium or just as a means of quickly freeing up crucial space on your devices.
And although it isn’t as quick as you might expect, given the quoted speeds, it is still pretty rapid. On my MacBook Air M2, I tested it using BlackMagick Disk Speed Test and it returned rates of 911MB/sec for reads and 876MB/sec over the course of seven runs. On the same laptop, I timed the transfer of a 3.4GB video file back and forth, and it returned 887MB/sec for reads and 788MB/sec for writes.
On a Windows laptop using CrystalDiskMark benchmarking tool, I measured large file transfer speeds of 1,061MB/sec (read) and 985MB/sec (write) over USB-C, while a real-world file transfer using Windows Explorer on the same laptop delivered speeds of 742MB/sec for reads and 500MB/sec for writes.
It’s worth bearing in mind, though, that USB-A transfer speeds are much slower. Here, CrystalDiskMark reported speeds of 465MB/sec (read) and 452MB/sec (write), so that connection is best avoided for larger amounts of data.
What could be improved?
I haven’t lost one of the plastic caps just yet, but it’s only a matter of time. They don’t fit quite securely enough to prevent them becoming dislodged while at the bottom of your bag and the caps are already beginning to feel a little loose.
The casing is a little on the wide side, too. Although that’s dictated somewhat by the width of the USB-A connector, it does mean that on some laptops you might need to disconnect your charger before connecting the Dual Portable. Depending on your laptop, that means you might well be better off with a small cable-connected drive like Kingston’s own XS2000 2TB.
Should you buy the Kingston Dual Portable SSD 2TB?
If the sheer convenience of the Kingston Dual Portable SSD is tempting, then the price may well put you off. The 2TB model is currently £352 on Amazon and around £315 from other retailers, including Game and, slightly weirdly, Sports Direct. That makes it a lot more expensive than the Kingston XS2000 2TB at £205; and it’s almost as small and neat, but doesn’t have the same integrated connectors.
In the end, there’s no drive that can quite beat the convenience of the Kingston Dual Portable SSD 2TB, but I’m not convinced that it’s particularly good value for money. That said, it has been considerably cheaper than this in the past – as low as £150 according to Keepa – so it may well be worth hanging on to see if the price drops during sales periods.
