Teamgroup PD20M portable SSD review: Fast for light duties only

Worth When Reviewed

1TB: $110 I 2TB: $165

Greatest Costs In the present day: Teamgroup PD20M

$109.99

$109.99

Whereas being an honest 20Gbps USB SSD with mild workloads, the Teamgroup PD20M just isn’t the drive for writing giant knowledge units on a continuing foundation. The parsimonious 20GB of cache on our 1TB check unit had it useless final general in our efficiency scores.

That’s a disgrace, as a result of it’s additionally one of many lightest and most engaging SSDs we’ve examined — i.e., it travels nicely, particularly with the useful carrying case that Teamgroup bundles.

Additional studying: See our roundup of the most effective exterior drives to study competing merchandise.

What are the Teamgroup PD20M’s options?

The PD20M is a 20Gbps USB 3.2×2 exterior SSD sporting a skinny, however squarish profile measuring 2.45-inches large, by 2.75-inches lengthy, by a mere 0.32-inches thick. The highest is rounded, whereas the underside is completely flat.

Unusually, there’s no anti-skid materials on the underside of the unit, nevertheless it makes excellent sense: The PD20M weighs a mere 1.1 ounces by itself, and just one.3 ounces with the Sort-C cable that plugs into one edge. With so little heft for gravity to impact, you’d have to make use of semi-adhesive tape to safe this featherweight pet in place.

The massive upside is that in case you’re searching for an SSD you possibly can dangle off of a port with out damaging it, that is it. Efficiency considerations apart, that’s. Simply watch out that you simply don’t neglect it’s in your pocket and put it by means of the wash!

Teamgroup warranties the PD20M for 3 years, however no point out is manufactured from the guarantee’s TBW (terabytes that could be written) ranking. Given the drives gradual write charge when cache runs out, which was quite early on the 1TB model we examined, you need to by no means have to fret about writing a lot knowledge that the corporate considers it unfair utilization.

How a lot does the Teamgroup PD20M value?

The PD20M is accessible in 1TB and 2TB capacities, which retail for $110, and $165, respectively. Given the efficiency, that’s a tad expensive. Certainly, after we checked Amazon, the mighty 1TB Essential X10 Professional, a far superior SSD, was accessible for $100. Hopefully, the PD20M will drop in value considerably briefly order.

How briskly is the Teamgroup PD20M?

In our preliminary testing, the Teamgroup PD20M turned in a far decrease (364MBps) CrystalDiskMark 8 sequential write quantity than the 2GBps claimed on the field. It lastly wrote at 1.8GBps, however solely after I lowered the dimensions of the 64GB knowledge set I usually use four-fold to 16GB.

Ie’ve included each the 64GB and 16GB outcomes as an instance precisely how vital cache, and the shortage thereof may be.

Observe once more, that the PD20M we examined was a 1TB drive. The Corsair EX100U on the charts, which skilled related slowdowns at one level or one other, was a 2TB drive. If Teamgroup has despatched us the 2TB model, it doubtless would’ve outpaced the Corsair.

The Essential X10 Professional is a a lot sooner drive, and provided that it’s presently $10 much less for 1TB, and solely $10 greater than the PD20M for 2TB, there’s little motive to go for latter apart from weight.

The parsimonious caching once more confirmed up in our real-world transfers. Whereas the PD20M was not the slowest exterior SSD we’ve examined (there are 4 or 5 slower 10Gbps items), it was simply the slowest 20Gbps SSD we’ve seen.

Beneath you possibly can see the place the PD20M ran out of cache — at across the 20GB mark.

The story was no higher within the 450GB write, which mainly proceeded at 364MBps from the relative get go. Sluggish.

In fact, few customers write even 48GB at a time, so just like the Corsair EX100U, the RD20M will do the job nearly all of the time when writing — and the entire time when studying.

Must you purchase the Teamgroup PD20M?

The PD20M is okay for mild duties, however the write slowdowns happen far to early, not less than on the 1TB mannequin, for me to advocate it for something apart from a light-duty drive. Additionally, evaluate costs. Not less than in the meanwhile, there are quite a few 20Gbps SSDs, a few of them much more constant performers, for much less.

How we check

Drive assessments presently make the most of Home windows 11 (22H2) 64-bit working on an X790 (PCIe 5.0) motherboard/i5-12400 CPU combo with two Kingston Fury 32GB DDR5 modules (64GB of reminiscence complete). Intel built-in graphics are used. The 48GB switch assessments make the most of an ImDisk RAM disk taking on 58GB of the 64GB complete reminiscence. The 450GB file is transferred from a Samsung 990 Professional 2TB, which additionally accommodates the working system. For exterior drives, the motherboard’s devoted Thunderbolt 4 and 20Gbps USB ports on the rear panel are used.

Every check is carried out on a newly NTSF-formatted and TRIM’d drive so the outcomes are optimum. Observe that as any drive fills up, efficiency will lower as a result of much less NAND for secondary caching, and different elements.

The efficiency numbers proven apply solely to the drive we had been shipped in addition to the capability examined. SSD efficiency can differ by capability as a result of extra or fewer chips to learn/write throughout and the quantity of NAND accessible for secondary caching (writing TLC/QLC as SLC). Distributors additionally sometimes swap elements.

Should you ever discover a big discrepancy between the efficiency you expertise and that which we report (programs being roughly equal), by all means—tell us.