Toshiba XS700 Portable SSD at CES 2018

Solid State Drives aren’t just internal anymore, they’ve also entered the mobile market. Along with the new RC100 NVMe budget SSD, Toshiba brought the new XS700 portable SSD with them to CES 2018. As far as I know, this is the first portable SSD made by Toshiba.

Toshiba XS700 Series Portable SSD

It is easy to see what the advantages of a portable SSD are over those of a portable HDD. It is the same as it is internally, it’s performance. You easily get up to 4.5 times the performance when compared to an external HDD. At the same time, it is far less prone to damage from shocks, drops, and bumps which easily occur on the road.

Naturally, Toshiba designed the new XS700 with the latest connection standards: USB 3.1 Gen.2. The protocol is able to deliver up to 10Gbps, but we won’t see that kind of speeds from the XS700. Inside is a SATA drive which sets the limitations. Still, it is fast and it can deliver up to 530 MB/s when reading and 480 MB/s when writing.

The drive has a latest USB connector, the Type-C. For compatibility reasons, the XS700 also comes with a Type-A adapter.

On the insides, the drive is built with the same NAND as the RC100 and TR200, 64-layer Toshiba BiCS3 3D TLC NAND. Initially, the drive will ship as 240GB versions with the option that more could come at a later time. The availability is set for Q2 this year.

On the outside, the drive measures a tiny 95mm by 75mm by 11mm and it only weighs 90 grammes.