Western Digital WD My Passport SSD, Space Grey, 500GB, USB-C 3.1

The decision to revamp the My Passport SSD was overdue since many brands that offer portable storage have released an NVMe technology external drive over the past year. A few brands are determined to squeeze the last from SATA SSDs. But, with USB 4.0 on the horizon, it won’t be long before even faster external drives are available. While not as elegant as its predecessor, the new My Passport SSD delivers good-enough performance combined with excellent transportability and an effective hardware-based security model. The problem for Western Digital is pricing, as comparable designs, like the Crucial X8 and Adata SE760 can be found cheaper. The wonky pricing, software that isn’t currently functional, the lack of alternative colours, and the missing 2TB capacity at launch all hint that Western Digital rushed into releasing this product. Hopefully, it will address all of these things in due course, and the new My Passport SSD will be as popular as the countless others that came before it.

The latest iterations of portable external storage have moved the performance needle to the right by taking advantage of faster NVMe-based SSDs connected via USB 3.2 Gen-2 Type-C. A good example is this year's WD My Passport SSD that's currently shipping in 500GB and 1TB flavours with a 2TB model to follow. Performance is tasty enough to hit the GB/s barrier in large-file reads and get close to it on writes, representing about 2x the performance of older SSD-based USB drives. It's also very portable, naturally has access to WD's array of utilities, and will be available in different colours in due course. It would be nice to have a longer Type-C cable in the box, a fingerprint-reader option would keep up with the Samsungs of this world, yet the biggest stumbling block is price. The recommended price of £222 for the reviewed 1TB model is at odds with the £175 for the rival Samsung T7 and also substantially higher than the ($190 ex tax, ~£175 inc. VAT) for the same drive over the pond. Overall, the WD My Passport SSD (2020) 1TB is a supremely fast external drive that, in the UK at least, is compromised by an uncompetitive street price. Technically excellent, it would make far more sense at £175 or so.