Gadgetory

I'm at a bit of a mission right now to find the perfect portable SSD before our trip to CES now what I mean perfect it doesn't mean performance price will factor heavily into this - and my first top in the search was a few weeks back when I reviewed the Samsung t3 portable SSD and after performing various synthetic and real-world tests I concluded in one single try that I had found a winner so this was a drive that was going to come with me when I'm away covering events but I also mentioned this are there any alternative solutions that might give the t3 a run for its money I think this little guy could be it but before I move on quick look at our sponsor yak cable mod configurator allows you to select only the cables you need with your choice of mod flex sleeping that is very flexible or mod mesh that is more vibrant then you choose your length and color combination custom cables just got more custom with the cable mod configurator this is the PNY elite portable SSD I have the 480 gigabyte model that officially costs two hundred and fifty dollars that's a $50 premium over the t3 s 500 gigabyte variant and before you hop into the hate rain remember I said officially it isn't all that rare to see this drive going for as low as a hundred and fifty dollars which isn't that bad at all unfortunately there are only two variants of the elite before 80 gigabyte and the 240 gigabyte model that costs $150 but can also be picked up for as low as $100 larger capacities that compete against Samsung's massive but super expensive one terabyte and two terabyte versions haven't been rolled out yet but aside from the premium price talk can this dry perform closer to or even better than the t3 from a physical standpoint the Pnyx SD has a much smaller footprint than the t3 in fact I couldn't believe that they were able to cram a 480 gigabyte module inside this tiny form factor here's a shot comparing it to a flash drive it can easily fit into your pocket your wallet or even a carry-on bag without taking too much space the enclosure is made out of aluminum and it feels rock-solid this should technically complement shock resistance even though PNY doesn't market anything about that I wanted to point out that the sides of the drive are covered in plastic and on my sample they weren't sealed properly which resulted in some movement when plugging in the cable and removing it off the drive that's definitely something to be mindful about especially when you consider Samsung's t3 didn't exhibit any quality issues this SSD comes with a USB 3.0 standard micro B 10 pin port compared to the 3.1 type C standard on the t3 now remember that Samsung's interface is USB 3.1 genuine so it's actual transfer speeds are identical to USB 3.0 I prefer time.see over this interface because it's reversible no matter how you plug it in whereas you can't do that on the pn1 SSD another interesting add-on to Samsung's portable SSD is that you can easily transfer files to and from a compatible Android phone that supports the type C but speed wise the P&Y elite SSD should meet the 450 megabytes per second spec under ideal conditions provided your system supports the USB protocol PNY also includes a free copy of akron s data protection software then you can install on your PC and utilize the SSD for backup so that's a bonus so let's start with synthetic benchmarks using the crystal disk mark to test large file size transfers the t3 gave us better numbers overall with much better read performance of about 7 percent and just slightly higher writes moving on to a doe benchmark as a test smaller file sizes the PNY SSD performed marginally better on the right side with identical weight numbers autism real-world tests I transferred a 63 gigabyte folder packed with 4k videos back and forth between the computer and the drives starting with the t3 that whole folder took 2 minutes and 45 seconds to transfer to the desktop averaging between 370 to 390 megabytes per second read performing that backwards took 3 minutes and 30 seconds because the white speeds were topping at around 300 megabytes per second the PNY SSD - at the same time transferring the folder to the desktop averaging the same speed but performing that backwards wasn't that impressive you see for a few seconds the drive averages 240 megabytes per second but then it dips to 95 megabytes per second for the rest of the transfer which resulted in about seven minutes to complete the tasks I rebooted the computer reformatted the drive plugged in multiple times and even tried a different port and the tests yielded the same results a bit awkward now to investigate this bit further I rendered a seven minute 4k video using Premiere Pro CC 2017 and sending destination to these drives the results only a six second difference with the t3 leading here so I think it's safe to say that the Pnyx SD still holds up pretty well with the right tests if you're transferring small scale files so what could be happening here it could be that the drives cache is being used up in the first few seconds of transfer and after that the nan is left to fend for itself lowering performance over time for larger transfers so I'm going to leave you guys on this note the PNY portable SSD is a fast drive the smaller footprint compared to the t3 is amazing but I would be extra careful lugging this thing around since the risk of losing is quite high it is that small as for performance the t3 still holds its value in speeds plus the extra 20 gigabytes of space can come in handy at times at the end of the day it still comes down to preference if you find the Pnyx SD for a cheaper price than the t3 go for it I still cannot comment on the reliability factor of this SSD since it's fairly new to the market and I hope to make a follow-up video regarding that what are your thoughts about this portable SSD frumpy and why did it give Samsung t3 a run for its money should I still keep looking for alternatives feedback is always appreciated I'm heber with hurricane X thank you so much for watching and we'll see you in the next one