At a look
Expert’s Rating
Pros
- Fast 20Gbps efficiency (with higher cable)
- Great heft and silicon jacket
- Good wanting
Cons
- Included cable is substandard
- Very, very costly
Our Verdict
Given the excessive worth of this SSD, it ought to ship with a greater cable.
Price When Reviewed
This worth will present the geolocated pricing textual content for product undefined
Best Pricing Today
Price When Reviewed
1TB $310 I 2TB: $420 I 4TB: $700 I 8TB: $1,500
Best Prices Today: Glyph Atom EX20 20Gbps SSD
This boutique USB SSD from Glyph is without doubt one of the extra spectacular to roll via our lab not too long ago. In phrases of design and efficiency, that’s factor — however the worth can be impressively excessive. That’s greater than possible as a result of ongoing rise in NAND costs, which is affecting all the storage trade, along with others.
Read on to study extra, then see our roundup of the best external drives for comparability.
What are the Glyph Atom EX20’s options?
The Atom EX20 is an exceptionally handsome, USB 3.2×2 (20Gbps) exterior SSD from Glyph. It’s all black and clad in a silicone jacket that’s ribbed in a tread sample to offer a really certain grip.
At 7.5 ounces (jacket included), the Atom EX20 is hardly the lightest exterior SSD I’ve examined, however the heft additionally offers you a way of high quality. It measures, jacket included, roughly 4.4-inches lengthy, by 2.4-inches vast, by a bit of below an inch thick. Both the Type-C port and exercise gentle are on the identical finish of the unit, with the port offset to the left.
The Atom EX20 is warrantied for 3 years with two of information restoration and one 12 months of alternative. There’s no TeraBytes Written (TBW) score, however determine round 600TBW, which is a complete lot of information. Remember, reads don’t rely, solely writes.
How a lot is the Glyph Atom EX20?
SSD costs have risen fairly a bit not too long ago, however I used to be nonetheless a bit stunned on the Atom EX20’s moderately steep pricing for a 20Gbps SSD: $310 for 1TB, $420 for 2TB, $700 for 4TB, and $1,500 for 8TB. And these costs we record are reductions, as proven under.
Basically, these costs are extra according to quicker 40Gbps USB4, than 20Gbps USB 3.2×2. With that in thoughts, the 40Gbps and solely barely pricier Glyph Atom EX40 (see the upcoming evaluate) is the higher deal.
Note that the 40Gbps model of the OWC 1M2 enclosure is presently solely $90 and might be married with an NVMe SSD for lower than $300. You may also wait six months to see if the entire AI/knowledge heart bubble bursts and SSD costs drop.
Glyph Atom EX20 efficiency caveats
Using the bundled 7-inch Type-C cable brought about points on our Windows check mattress, with the EX20 initially writing at solely 50- to 80MBps, and writing at solely 20MBps on an M4 Mac. For no matter cause, learn efficiency was over 2GBps, so the cable situation is a very vexing conundrum.
If you need one of the best, least problematic Type-C cable, use a Thunderbolt cable — they’re utterly suitable with USB and manufactured to tight tolerances. Indeed, utilizing one solved the Atom EX20’s write efficiency situation.
This shouldn’t be the primary time I’ve used a bundled cable that didn’t permit full efficiency — the TerraMaster D1 SSD Pro had the identical situation, albeit it was an 80Gbps cable that throttled to 20Gbps.
Note additionally, that as with all USB 3.2×2 SSDs, the Atom EX20 will fall again to 10Gbps with no devoted 20Gbps port. This is as a result of most methods with out one don’t help the protocol, however do help the 10Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2 normal.
How quick is the Glyph Atom EX20?
Once I switched cables, the 4TB Atom EX20 turned in a blistering efficiency. One that garnered it the number-two spot amongst all 20Gbps SSDs. The solely drive to beat it was the Asus TUF Gaming A2, which is definitely an unpopulated enclosure that I crammed with an especially quick Samsung 9100 Pro.
That was not significantly truthful of us. So due to that, contemplate the EX20 the highest canine in pre-populated 20Gbps USB. That’s borne out by the drive’s CrystalDiskMark 8 numbers proven under.
The Glyph Atom EX20 once more competed properly with its rivals (Corsair EX400U, Crucial X10) within the CrystalDiskMark 4K checks.
The Atom EX20 was aggressive in our real-world 48GB transfers, although it didn’t present as a lot potential within the FastCopy checks because the Crucial X10.
Being a 4TB SSD actually helped the Atom EX20 in our 450GB write check (the others are 2TB). It had loads of secondary cache to play with and by no means slowed considerably.
I’ve no complaints in regards to the Atom EX20’s efficiency — it’s a really quick 20Gbps USB SSD.
Should you purchase the Glyph Atom EX20?
In gentle of my expertise with the cable and the value, the purchase advice is… maybe. If price is not any concern, make {that a} sure. Put one other means, the design and efficiency are wonderful (cable excepted), however for the time being, it’s very costly, as many boutique vendor SSDs are.
Note that Glyph is wanting into the cable situation, and can possible repair it by the point you learn this. That stated, check yours very first thing utilizing CrystalDiskMark 8 or one other artificial benchmark to verify.
How we check
Drive checks presently make the most of Windows 11 24H2, 64-bit operating off of a PCIe 4.0 Samsung 990 Pro in an Asus Z890-Creator WiFi (PCIe 4.0/5.0) motherboard. The CPU is a Core Ultra i5 225 feeding/fed by two Crucial 64GB DDR5 5600MHz modules (128GB of reminiscence complete).
Both 20Gbps USB and Thunderbolt 5 are built-in into the motherboard and Intel CPU/GPU graphics are used. Internal PCIe 5.0 SSDs concerned in testing are mounted in an Asus Hyper M.2 x16 Gen5 adapter card sitting in a PCIe 5.0 slot.
We run the CrystalDiskMark 8.04 (and 9), AS SSD 2, and ATTO 4 artificial benchmarks (to maintain article size down, we report solely the primary) to seek out the storage system’s potential efficiency. Then we run a sequence of 48GB switch and 450GB write checks utilizing Windows Explorer drag and drop to point out what customers will see throughout routine copy operations, in addition to the far quicker FastCopy run as administrator to point out what’s doable.
A 25GBps two-SSD RAID 0 array on the aforementioned Asus Hyper M.2 x16 Gen5 is used because the second drive in our switch checks. Formerly the 48GB checks have been accomplished with a RAM disk serving that function.
Each check is carried out on a NTFS-formatted and newly TRIM’d drive so the outcomes are optimum. Note that in regular use, as a drive fills up, efficiency could lower as a result of much less NAND for secondary caching, in addition to different components. This situation has abated considerably with the present crop of SSDs using extra mature controllers and much quicker, late-generation NAND.