At a look
Expert’s Rating
Pros
- Small form-factor
- MagSafe magnetic mounting
- Good 10Gbps efficiency
Our Verdict
If you need a good-performing SSD that you may follow the again of your MagSafe system, then the 10Gbps EX300U is the extra reasonably priced (albeit slower) selection than the corporate’s USB4 EX400U.
Price When Reviewed
This worth will present the geolocated pricing textual content for product undefined
Best Pricing Today
Price When Reviewed
1TB: $100 I 2TB: $180 I 4TB: $340
Best Prices Today: Corsair EX300U
Small, skinny, and squarish SSDs appear to be in vogue nowadays, with Corsair as energetic in producing them as any firm. Witness the EX300U, a inexpensive, 10Gbps different to the USB4 (40Gbps) EX400U I reviewed about six months back.
It shares its sibling’s MagSafe magnetic circle on again for straightforward attachment to gadgets that enable it, although not its pace.
What are the EX300U’s options?
The EX300U is a 10Gbps USB drive inside a 2.5-inch sq. that’s roughly 0.5-inch thick. In look, it’s precisely just like the sooner EX400U, except for the mannequin quantity on the again label.
There’s the identical round MagSafe magnet on the again that can connect to any appropriate floor, together with many telephones. Yes, auxiliary storage for a lot of newbie videographers.
The solely different distinction is the burden — at solely 1.4 ounces, the EX300U is palpably lighter than the 1.8-ounce EX400U. I used to be a bit stunned I might really feel the distinction, however I did.
The controller is a Phison PS2217-17 and the NAND is 3D, in fact. Corsair wasn’t particular as as to whether it’s TLC or QLC, however the minimal write price in my assessments was 450MBps so no matter it’s (my guess is the newest QLC), the native write price isn’t tragic.
Corsair features a helpful brief, grey Type-C to Type-C cable with one of many connectors angled for a much less obtrusive connection to telephones and the like.
The guarantee on the EX300U is three years, which is the same old for exterior SSDs, however the 250TBW (terabytes that may be written) per terabyte of capability is a bit of stingy. Still, the percentages of anybody exceeding that restrict is fairly low in a light-duty exterior 10Gbps USB SSD.
A 3-year/250TBW guarantee is extra regarding within the EX400U, which is quick sufficient to see some heavy-duty write hundreds.
How a lot does the EX300U price?
The EX300U is obtainable in 1TB/$100, 2TB/$180, and 4TB/$340 capacities. At the time of this writing, that’s $10 cheaper than the 1TB EX400U, and $20 cheaper on the 2TB and 4TB capacities.
While a penny saved is a penny earned, I used to be truthfully hoping that the EX300U would prevent a number of extra given the decreased efficiency. Still, should you don’t have the sooner port to benefit from a USB 3.2×2 or USB4 SSD, you would possibly as properly save what you possibly can.
How quick is the EX300U?
The EX300U is an effective performer for a 10Gbps SSD. It’s completely different in form, however comparable in dimension and weight to the 2 10Gbps thumb drives (the Seagate Ultra Compact SSD and SK Hynix Tube T31) it’s in comparison with within the charts.
As already talked about, the EX300U is, fairly logically, far slower than its 40Gbps EX400U sibling. Even although that drive is itself sluggish for a USB4 SSD.
Regardless, the EX300U was simply sooner in CrystalDiskMark 8’s sequential assessments than the aforementioned 10Gbps competitors.
In CrystalDiskMark 8’s random assessments, nonetheless, the Ultra Compact SSD cleaned the EX300U’s clock.
In our real-life 48GB transfers, the EX300U was again on prime of the competitors in lots of assessments, although fell brief in others. Totaled up, it’s nonetheless a win for the EX300U.
While the T31 was a contact sooner with FastCopy, the EX300U was tops with Windows Explorer in writing 450GB to its cells.
Overall, I noticed higher efficiency from the EX300U than from the competitors.
One aberration: CrystalDiskMark 8 wouldn’t run when the EX300U was hooked up to my Thunderbolt 5 port. It created the 64GiB file, however the numbers by no means modified from 0. Whether this was the BIOS, Thunderbolt 5/USB4 implementation, or the SSD is anybody’s guess and Corsair hadn’t decided the reason for the difficulty by the point of this writing. All my copy assessments over Thunderbolt 5 went off with no hitch.
The EX300U additionally carried out as anticipated with all of the artificial benchmarks when hooked up to the 10Gbps and 20Gbps USB ports.
Should you purchase the Corsair EX300U?
Though not as fast as its 40Gbps EX400U cousin, the EX300U is well quick sufficient for many customers and most transportable gadgets. And, it’s extra reasonably priced than the 20/40Gbps competitors, albeit not by as a lot as I’d hope.
So, sure, if value is paramount or you don’t have any sooner USB ports to benefit from sooner drives, assume EX300. But go together with the EX400U if you’d like actually top-notch small-and-square efficiency.
How we take a look at
Drive assessments at present 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 4800MHz 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 a Asus Hyper M.2 x16 Gen5 adapter card.
We run the CrystalDiskMark 8.04 (and 9), AS SSD 2, and ATTO 4 artificial benchmarks (to maintain article size down, we solely report one) to seek out the storage system’s potential efficiency, then a collection of 48GB and 450GB transfers assessments utilizing Windows Explorer drag and drop to point out what customers will see throughout routine copy operations, in addition to the far sooner FastCopy run as administrator to point out what’s attainable.
A 20GBps two-SSD RAID 0 array on the aforementioned Asus Hyper M.2 x16 Gen5 is used because the second drive in our switch assessments. Formerly the 48GB assessments have been achieved with a RAM disk serving that objective.
Each take a look at 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 might lower attributable to much less NAND for secondary caching, in addition to different elements. This difficulty has abated considerably with the present crop of SSDs using extra mature controllers and much sooner, late-generation NAND.
Note that our testing MO evolves and these outcomes might not match these from earlier articles. Only comparisons contained in the article are 100% legitimate as these outcomes are gathered utilizing the present {hardware} and MO.