Sabrent Rocket Nano V2 portable SSD review: 4TB of fast, tiny storage

Price When Reviewed

1TB: $120 I 2TB: $200 I 4TB: $450

Best Prices Today: Sabrent Rocket Nano V2

$119.99

Sabrent’s Rocket Nano V2 transportable SSD lives as much as each elements of its title — it’s quick (within the grand scheme) and it’s tiny. Okay, maybe “Rocket” is a bit a lot, because the drive is on the sluggish facet for USB 3.2×2, however that’s a branding title for all Sabrent SSDs. (Perhaps its homeowners are Guardians of the Galaxy followers?)

Semantics apart, the Nano V2 is a high quality, and certainly, very small SSD that arrives in a few of our favourite packaging.

Further studying: See our roundup of the best external drives to study competing merchandise.

What are the Sabrent Rocket Nano V2’s options?

The Sabrent Rocket Nano V2 is a USB 3.2×2, 20Gbs exterior SSD obtainable in as much as 4TB of capability. It’s a good-looking, and notably tiny unit at a mere 2.73-inches lengthy, 1.16-inches vast, and 0.44-inches thick. Weight is 1.7 ounces. Personally, I just like the heft.

While the photograph on the prime of this text exhibits the Nano V2 with out its cowl, that was for pure inventive causes. The drive truly ships with a silicon jacket put in as proven beneath. The jacket provides roughly 0.06-inches to every dimension.

And, because the photograph additionally exhibits, the jacket is susceptible to amassing micro-schmutz. In fact, I airbrushed most of it out to deal with such aesthetic issues.

There’s no arguing with Sabrent’s step-above out-of-box expertise. No cardboard retail container right here, however a strong steel case that can be utilized to retailer the Rocket Nano V2, or retasked for different functions. I hold all of the Sabrent instances round as a result of they’re helpful and good trying.

Sabrent warranties the Rocket Nano V2 for 5 years, restricted to drives that aren’t crushed and that you just haven’t tried to jot down an exabyte of knowledge to. (Note that the latter is definitely unattainable and also you’ll probably expertise write failures after a few petabytes max.)

As some customers have requested, whereas an SSD could now not permit writes, it stays readable, so knowledge loss is usually not a priority with overuse.

How a lot is the Sabrent Rocket Nano V2?

It’s a bit troublesome to evaluate the Rocket Nano V2’s bang for the buck. Why? Sabrent lists affordable sale costs alongside beyond-steep MSRPs on its web site: $120/$230 for the 1TB, $200/$400 for the 2TB, and $450/$900 for the 4TB.

On sale, the Rocket Nano V2 is only a bit pricier than the USB 3.2×2 norm, however the MSRPs are, nicely, yowser. Obviously, I say yea to the sale costs, and nay to the MSRPs when recommending (or not) this drive. If I needed to guess, the sale is probably going everlasting. Let me know if I’m flawed.

How quick is the Sabrent Rocket Nano V2?

The 4TB Nano V2 that Sabrent despatched us proved an excellent, if not stellar performer when weighed towards different 20Gbps sorts. The 4K random assessments had it on par with the competitors, but it surely examined considerably slower in sequential throughput and our real-world transfers.

The excellent news is that whereas write charges drop when the secondary cache is full, it was usually solely to a nonetheless workable 750MBps. We noticed it nosedive often to 200MBps, however basically it maintained the upper secondary price. When absolutely endowed with secondary cache, the Nano V2 writes at 1.4GBps — nothing to sneeze at.

Below you possibly can see the proof for my conclusions, beginning with CrystalDiskMark 8’s sequential outcomes. Note that these have been confirmed by AS SSD.

Random learn and write efficiency is a particular power of the Nano V2 as you possibly can see beneath.

The Nano V2’s 48GB transfers have been superb, however not on par with the Adata SD810 and Samsung T9, and positively not the most-excellent Crucial X10 Pro.

Where the 750MBps secondary write velocity got here in very helpful was the 450GB single-file write. The velocity dropped early on, however maintained all through the whole switch, resulting in a decently aggressive time, not a tragic one as with the Corsair EX100U and Adata SD810.

This is the form of sustained native write efficiency you get from late-gen TLC (Triple-Level Cell/3-bit) — 128-layer SK Hynix TLC, to be particular.

Below you possibly can see the uneven price of the 450GB write, although 736MBps is a good valley. Ignore the preliminary peak as that’s attributable to Windows buffering. This display was not from the timed take a look at, which featured no preliminary peak.

Should you purchase the Sabrent Rocket/Nano V2?

The Sabrent Rocket/Nano V2 we examined is finest for many who want a number of capability in a tiny type issue. It doesn’t ship the nth diploma of efficiency that 20Gbps drives are able to, but it surely’s a cultured sufficient design that we are able to stay with that.

How we take a look at

Drive assessments presently make the most of 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 over 58GB of the 64GB complete reminiscence. The 450GB file is transferred from a Samsung 990 Pro 2TB, which additionally incorporates the working system. For exterior drives, the motherboard’s devoted Thunderbolt 4 and 20Gbps USB ports on the rear panel are used.

Each take a look at is carried out on a newly NTFS-formatted and TRIM’d drive so the outcomes are optimum. Note that as any drive fills up, efficiency will lower attributable to much less NAND for secondary caching, and different elements.

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

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