Samsung X5 Thunderbolt 3 Portable SSD Review: Ridiculously Fast External Storage

Name: Samsung X5 Thunderbolt 3 Portable SSD
Brand: Samsung

by Marco Chiappetta — Tuesday, August 28, 2018, 10:00 AM EDT

CrystalDiskMark is a synthetic benchmark that tests both sequential and random small and mid-sized file transfers using incompressible data. It provides a quick look at best and worst case scenarios with regard to SSD performance, best case being larger sequential transfers and worse case being small, random transfers.

CrystalDiskMark Benchmarks

Synthetic File Transfer Tests

CrystalDiskMark shows the Samsung X5 once again offering the highest sequential transfers by far, versus Samsung's previous-gen external SSDs. 4K reads at QD1 (Queue Depth of 1) are also the best of the bunch, but 4K QD1 writes trail some of the internal drives. 4K reads at high queue depths also crush the Samsung T3 and T5, but trail the internal drives in both reads and writes.

Tags: Samsung, SSD, Storage, Thunderbolt, nvme, samsung x5

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com