FEATURED by Alex Schuchter
Samsung Portable SSD T7 Touch Review
Earlier this month Samsung introduced a next-generation external storage solution, the Samsung Portable SSD T7 Touch. This drive is faster, more compact, and features convenient data protection all wrapped inside a sleek and slim aluminum palm-sized case roughly the size of a credit card. The T7 Touch delivers read/write speeds of up to 1,050/1,000MB/s, which is more than 1.9 times faster than current SATA-based portable SSDs and more than 9.5 times faster than external HDDs. Additionally, the T7 offers password protection based on AES 256-bit hardware encryption and fingerprint recognition as means of convenient but powerful security.
January 13th, 2020 by Adam Armstrong
NETGEAR Makes Announcements Around Nighthawk & Orbi
At CES this year, NETGEAR made several announcements that made it under our radar. These announcements center around expanding the company’s Nighthawk systems with new models including a mesh WiFi 6 router. NETGEAR also announced a 4G LTE Orbi Tri-bad mesh WiFi Router.
January 9th, 2020 by Lyle Smith
HP ZBook 17 G6 Workstation Review
The ZBook 17 G6 is the largest model of HP’s new-generation mobile workstations. The 17-inch notebook features some of the same upgraded components as ZBook 15 G6, including the latest 9th Gen Intel Core i9 and Xeon Processors (as high as the 2.4 GHz Xeon E 2286M vPro processor with up to 5.0 GHz via Turbo Boost and support for up to eight cores) and up to 128GB of RAM. One of the biggest advantages of the 17-inch model, however, is the GPU, which features up to the powerful NVIDIA Quadro RTX5000 with ray tracing, deep learning, and advanced shading. The new ZBook can also be outfitted with up to three 1TB PCIe Gen 3 x4 NVMe TLC SSDs and features 3 USB 3.0 ports, 2 USB Type-C ports (Thunderbolt 3 + DP 1.4 + USB 3.1 Gen 2) and an HDMI port.
January 8th, 2020 by Adam Armstrong
Samsung Releases Portable SSD T7 Touch
Today Samsung Electronics America, Inc. announced the release of the Portable Solid State Drive (SSD) T7 Touch. The latest version of the company’s flagship portable memory device keeps with Samsung’s beautiful design while adding even more performance through the USB Gen 2 standard. The T7 Touch also comes with a built-in fingerprint sensor for added security.
January 7th, 2020 by Adam Armstrong
OWC Thunderbolt 3 Pro Dock Review
The notebooks on the market today are dramatically faster than previous generations, but as manufacturers push to make them smaller, it has left users with far fewer connectivity options. It used to be common to find LAN ports (or even USB-A on notebooks), but common legacy ports are being chopped from platforms left and right. To help with the struggle, OWC is offering a way for users to have these ultra-compact devices (or just regular computers that need more connectivity) with its OWC Thunderbolt 3 Pro Dock. This dock is specifically aimed at creative pros giving them up to 40Gb/s of bandwidth across card readers, USB3 connectivity, 10Gb LAN (!) and and countless external data-hungry devices such as RAID arrays or eGPUs.
January 7th, 2020 by Adam Armstrong
SK hynix Announces New NVMe Consumer Drives At CES 2020
Today at CES 2020 in Las Vegas, SK hynix Inc. announced two new PCIe NVMe SSD families. The new drives are the Platinum P31 and Gold P31 PCIe NVMe consumer Solid State Drives (SSDs). The new SSD families along with several of SK hynix products will be showcased at the company’s booth #13529 at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2020, which is being held from January 7th to 10th in Las Vegas, Nevada.
January 6th, 2020 by Adam Armstrong
Seagate Announces New Gaming Drives At CES 2020
Today at CES 2020 in Las Vegas, Seagate Technology plc announced new drives for consumers. These including the gaming drives Seagate FireCuda Gaming SSD and the BarraCuda Fast SSD. The new drives are all about performance leveraging NVME and USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 for more speed.
December 30th, 2019 by Adam Armstrong
ADATA XPG SPECTRIX S40G RGB SSD Review
The ADATA XPG SPECTRIX S40G RGB is an M.2 SSD that is designed for those looking for performance at a good price as well as a little bit of Wow in their drive design. The S40G leverages an NVMe interface, as well as SLC caching and a DRAM buffer, for quoted speeds of 3.5GB/s read and 3GB/s write as well as throughput as his at 300K IOPS read and 240K IPS write. The drive is marketed toward gamers, PC enthusiasts, overclockers, and graphic professionals.
December 29th, 2019 by Lyle Smith
WD Blue SN550 SSD Review
The WD Blue SN550 is the company’s newest mainstream NVMe SSD and successor to the SN500, which we reviewed earlier this year. The new WD drive is a consumer, entry-level drive all packed inside the small M.2 2280 form factor. This includes an in-house controller, firmware, and their latest 3D NAND. As such, this makes it ideal for PC users looking to improve overall system performance over traditional SATA SSDs and especially HDDs, for jobs including booting and application load speeds. It’s also perfect for those looking to move to an NVMe-based SSD at a very affordable cost.
December 19th, 2019 by Adam Armstrong
WD_BLACK P50 Game Drive SSD Review
Back at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany Western Digital Corp. (WDC) announced a new portfolio of external storage solutions for PC and console gamers, its new WD_Black products, including the new WD_Black P50 SSD. As the name states, the WD_Black P50 is a portable NVMe SSD that gamers can use to store part of their game library on for potentially faster loading times than the internal hard drive in their console or PC. The WD_Black P50 adds extra games to users Xbox One consoles, PlayStation 4s, or PC Gaming computing.