Teamgroup PD20M portable SSD overview: Hasty for gentle tasks most effective

Ticket When Reviewed

1TB: $110 I 2TB: $165

Supreme Prices This day: Teamgroup PD20M

While being a decent 20Gbps USB SSD with gentle workloads, the Teamgroup PD20M is no longer the drive for writing dapper recordsdata sets on a seamless basis. The parsimonious 20GB of cache on our 1TB take a look at unit had it ineffective final total in our efficiency ratings.

That’s a shame, since it’s additionally in point of fact one of the major lightest and most inviting SSDs we’ve tested — i.e., it travels correctly, especially with the to hand carrying case that Teamgroup bundles.

Extra reading: Stare our roundup of the finest external drives to discover about competing merchandise.

What are the Teamgroup PD20M’s aspects?

The PD20M is a 20Gbps USB 3.2×2 external SSD wearing a skinny, nonetheless squarish profile measuring 2.45-inches wide, by 2.75-inches long, by a mere 0.32-inches thick. The head is rounded, whereas the bottom is perfectly flat.

Strangely, there’s no anti-skid subject topic on the bottom of the unit, nonetheless it indubitably makes superb sense: The PD20M weighs a mere 1.1 ounces on its have, and most effective 1.3 ounces with the Form-C cable that plugs into one edge. With so tiny heft for gravity to cease, you’d must employ semi-adhesive tape to true this featherweight pet in map.

The dapper upside is that whereas you’re buying for an SSD you might dangle off of a port with out damaging it, this is it. Efficiency considerations aside, that’s. Fair correct watch out that you don’t neglect it’s for your pocket and effect it by the wash!

Teamgroup warranties the PD20M for 3 years, nonetheless no point out is product of the warranty’s TBW (terabytes that would be written) rating. Given the drives gradual write price when cache runs out, which was once somewhat early on the 1TB version we tested, you will relish to silent never must anguish about writing so valuable recordsdata that the corporate considers it unfair usage.

How valuable does the Teamgroup PD20M tag?

The PD20M is accessible in 1TB and 2TB capacities, which retail for $110, and $165, respectively. Given the efficiency, that’s a tad costly. Certainly, once we checked Amazon, the mighty 1TB Vital X10 Educated, a a lot superior SSD, was once accessible for $100. With any luck, the PD20M will descend in tag very a lot in short elaborate.

How rapid is the Teamgroup PD20M?

In our initial sorting out, the Teamgroup PD20M turned in a a lot decrease (364MBps) CrystalDiskMark 8 sequential write number than the 2GBps claimed on the box. It will definitely wrote at 1.8GBps, nonetheless most effective after I lowered the size of the 64GB recordsdata space I customarily employ four-fold to 16GB.

Ie’ve incorporated both the 64GB and 16GB results to illustrate exactly how major cache, and the inability thereof would be.

Designate but again, that the PD20M we tested was once a 1TB drive. The Corsair EX100U on the charts, which experienced identical slowdowns at one level or but one more, was once a 2TB drive. If Teamgroup has sent us the 2TB version, it doubtless would’ve outpaced the Corsair.

The Vital X10 Educated is a substantial sooner drive, and given that it’s for the time being $10 less for 1TB, and most effective $10 extra than the PD20M for 2TB, there’s tiny motive to make a choice for latter diverse than weight.

The parsimonious caching but again confirmed up in our accurate-world transfers. While the PD20M was once no longer the slowest external SSD we’ve tested (there are four or five slower 10Gbps items), it was once effortlessly the slowest 20Gbps SSD we’ve seen.

Below you might explore where the PD20M ran out of cache — at round the 20GB heed.

The story was once no higher within the 450GB write, which in total proceeded at 364MBps from the relative get accelerate. Leisurely.

Genuinely, few users write even 48GB at a time, so bask in the Corsair EX100U, the RD20M will produce the job the bulk of the time when writing — and always when reading.

Would perhaps well silent you to make a decision the Teamgroup PD20M?

The PD20M is honest for gentle tasks, nonetheless the write slowdowns happen far to early, no no longer up to on the 1TB mannequin, for me to suggest it for the leisure diverse than a steady-responsibility drive. Also, compare prices. No lower than for the time being, there are a total lot 20Gbps SSDs, some of them far extra constant performers, for less.

How we take a look at

Drive assessments for the time being carry out basically the most of House 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 memory total). Intel constructed-in graphics are ancient. The 48GB transfer assessments carry out basically the most of an ImDisk RAM disk taking on 58GB of the 64GB total memory. The 450GB file is transferred from a Samsung 990 Educated 2TB, which additionally incorporates the working system. For external drives, the motherboard’s dedicated Thunderbolt 4 and 20Gbps USB ports on the rear panel are ancient.

Every take a look at is performed on a newly NTSF-formatted and TRIM’d drive so the outcomes are optimal. Designate that as any drive fills up, efficiency will decrease attributable to less NAND for secondary caching, and diverse components.

The efficiency numbers proven divulge most effective to the drive we were shipped as well to the skill tested. SSD efficiency can fluctuate by skill attributable to extra or fewer chips to learn/write across and the amount of NAND accessible for secondary caching (writing TLC/QLC as SLC). Vendors additionally most incessantly swap parts.

In case you ever look for a dapper discrepancy between the efficiency you experience and that which we file (programs being roughly equal), by all means—allow us to snatch.