Kingston XS1000 Exterior SSD Evaluation

The Kingston XS1000 Exterior SSD ($64.99 for 1TB, $109.99 for 2TB as examined) is an inexpensive and eminently transportable exterior solid-state drive (SSD) with a USB 3.2 Gen 2 interface that’s suitable with most any Home windows, Mac, or Linux laptop. Its benchmark scores have been typical for a Gen 2 SSD, which interprets to strong file switch efficiency. Simply watch out when taking the XS1000 on the highway, as a result of it lacks the ruggedization options of another exterior SSDs, and it doesn’t present hardware-based encryption. For these options, you may have to spend a bit extra on a drive just like the Editors’ Selection-winning Essential X9 Professional.

The Design: Tiny, But Succesful

The XS1000 measures 0.5 by 1.3 by 2.7 inches (HWD) and weighs barely an oz. It resembles a large USB thumb drive. It’s almost similar in design to its sibling, the Kingston XS2000, besides that the XS1000 is matte black whereas the XS2000 has a silver-colored prime and backside, and it lacks the XS2000’s detachable black rubberized sleeve to guard it from drops. The XS1000 additionally lacks an IP (ingress safety) score, which means that the drive provides no explicit safety from water or mud. It additionally lacks the nearly uncrackable 256-bit AES hardware-based encryption discovered on many different exterior SSDs.

A USB-C port resides in the midst of one of many XS1000’s brief ends, and a USB-C-to-USB-A cable is included. (Peculiarly, Kingston does not additionally embody a USB-C-to-USB-C cable or an adapter.) The XS1000’s USB 3.2 Gen 2 interface ought to be suitable with most any laptop computer or desktop laptop with a USB-C or USB-A port. The XS2000 helps the sooner USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 customary, however to avail your self of its blazing throughput you will have both a suitable laptop (few fashions, even latest ones, are), or so as to add a Gen 2×2 growth card. Try our USB-C explainer for extra on the variations among the many USB interfaces.

(Credit score: Joseph Maldonado)

The XS1000 comes preformatted within the exFAT file format, and is suitable with Home windows, Mac, Linux, and ChromeOS techniques. Kingston provides it in capacities of 1TB and 2TB. Another high-profile exterior SSDs, just like the Essential X9 Professional and the Samsung Moveable SSD T9, have 4TB choices, whereas the Samsung Moveable SSD T7 Contact and the Samsung Moveable SSD T7 Defend additionally max out at 2TB. The SK Hynix Beetle X31 is proscribed to 1TB.

Kingston backs the XS1000 with a five-year guarantee, which is widespread with exterior SSDs, though some, just like the SK Hynix Beetle X31, are restricted to 3 years.

Testing the Kingston XS1000: Typical Gen 2 Efficiency

We check exterior SSDs utilizing PC Labs’ Home windows 10 storage testbed, a desktop constructed on an Asus Prime X299 Deluxe motherboard with an Intel Core i9-10980XE Excessive Version CPU, housed in a SilverStone case. The system has 48GB of DDR4 Corsair Dominator RAM clocked to three,600MHz, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6GB graphics card. We use the motherboard’s 10Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2 port for testing suitable drives such because the Essential X9 Professional; for Gen 2×2 drives, we check utilizing a 2×2 port added through an Orico PCIe growth card.

We put the XS1000 via our traditional suite of exterior solid-state drive benchmarks, together with Crystal DiskMark 6.0, PCMark 10 Storage, Blackmagic’s Disk Pace Take a look at, and our personal folder switch check. The primary two are run on the PC with the drive formatted in NTFS, and the latter two on an Apple MacBook Professional utilizing exFAT. Crystal DiskMark’s sequential pace exams present a conventional measure of drive throughput, simulating best-case, straight-line transfers of huge information. The PCMark 10 Storage check measures an SSD’s readiness for all kinds of on a regular basis duties.

Comparability drives embody a lot of the latest USB 3.2 Gen 2 SSDs we now have reviewed, in addition to the XS1000’s USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 counterpart, the Kingston XS2000.

The XS1000’s Crystal DiskMark and Blackmagic pace scores have been all inside the very slim vary of scores we see for the overwhelming majority of Gen 2 exterior SSDs we now have examined, and its folder-copy outcomes matched a lot of the different drives. (Its learn scores have been close to the highest of their respective teams, with write scores within the center.) The XS1000’s PCMark 10 Storage rating was in the midst of the pack for a Gen 2 SSD.

Verdict: Modest Options for a Modest Value

Modestly priced for a USB 3.2 Gen 2 exterior SSD, the featherweight Kingston XS1000 can simply slot in your pocket—heck, you possibly can match 5 of them in a pocket, with room to spare. The XS1000 churned out typical speeds for its ilk in our testing, with its learn speeds barely higher than write speeds. Not like the Editors’ Selection-winning Essential X9 Professional, the XS1000 lacks ruggedization options in addition to 256-bit AES hardware-based encryption, thought of the gold customary in civilian-level encryption options.

If you happen to do not want these options, and you do not require a high-capacity drive—the XS1000 maxes out at 2TB, whereas the X9 Professional and different latest exterior SSDs supply a 4TB variations—the XS1000 is an in any other case succesful various and is available in at a very reasonable worth.