Plugable has a variety of solutions for the Mac. One of the company's more popular performance-focused products is the Thunderbolt 3 2TB NVMe Solid State Drive, which has a relatively high storage capacity in a small form factor.
Plugable says that the fast transfer speeds of up to 2,400MB/s read and 1,800MB/s write are ideal for recent Mac models. As soon as a drive is plugged into a Thunderbolt port, it will work and be formatted as exFAT.
The design of the Plugable Thunderbolt 3 is subtle, with a sleek black annodized aluminum case with ridges on the sides. It's light and portable, but still heavy and solid. It comes with a soft carrying bag to protect it from damage during travel, but it doesn't offer any protection against other damage. The drive should be more durable since it has no moving parts.
I would have liked a more minimalist look without the Plugable and Thunderbolt logos on the drive. There is a single light on the top of the storage device.
The Thunderbolt 3 cable provides bus power and data transfer. It's nice that you don't have to worry about finding a cable when travelling, but I found the drive more difficult to transport because of it. It would be difficult to replace the cable if it wore out before the storage device. The drive is covered by a limited warranty for 36 months.
Plugable's drive is able to reach extremely high transfer speeds thanks to the new technology. Plugable's advertised 2,400MB/s read and 1,800MB/s write speeds vary depending on factors like other peripherals connected to your Mac, the speed of the storage you're transferring data from or to, and how much data is on it.
The drive was very fast, with transfer speeds for small files close to instantaneous. I got 1,700MB/s write and 1,800MB/s read with a stress of 1GB, and 1,300MB/s write and 800MB/s read with a stress of 5GB. Even though the drive was almost full, it still continued to perform well and provide a level of performance that should meet the demands of professional workflows.
TheSSD can get very hot to the point of being very uncomfortable to touch for a long period of time. It's normal for high- performance storage to get hot in use, but it doesn't seem to affect performance.
There is nothing on the market that can offer such fast transfer speeds at such a low price. A professional drive in this class can be had for a discounted price of $449.
Plugable's drive can be used for large file transfers, running games and demanding applications, and photo and video editing from an external source. Most average users do not need the kind of transfer speeds offered by Plugable's Thunderbolt SSD, but for professionals who need the fastest possible speeds, it is definitely worth considering thanks to its simple, plug-and-play, Mac friendly experience.
The Plugable website and Amazon.com both have Plugable's Thunderbolt 3 NV ME Solid State Drive in stock.
Plugable gave MacRumors with a solid state drive for this review. None of the other compensation was given.
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