Kingston Dual Portable SSD review: Must-have storage accessory

Recently, the world's leading memory accessory-maker Kingston launched the new line of Dual Portable SSD (Solid State Drive) storage series in India.

It is available in capacities-- 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB with prices starting at Rs 15,889.

Design and build quality

For almost a decade, I have largely depended on a large external portable storage pack. Every time I had to travel out of the city for work, I faced a space crunch in my compact gadget organiser pouch, and always, the powerbank used to win against SSD. But, having used Kingston's latest Dual Portable SSD, I may never have to face such a dilemma again.

As you can see from the cover photo, it comes in a tiny form factor like a pen drive, but with a very large storage space. Our review unit is 1TB, which is more than enough to store hundreds of movies or several thousand photos and videos.

And, I don't have to carry a data cable at all. It comes with both the Type-A and Type-C USB ports, which can be used to instantly connect with a computer, a phone or a tablet.

Kingston Dual Portable SSD storage.

It measures 71.85mm (length) x 21.1mm (width) x 8.6mm (thickness) in dimensions and weighs just 13g, almost an average pair of earbuds. It can easily slip into the watch pocket in the jeans and be forgotten about.

Kingston's new SSD is made of a metal internal frame and sturdy plastic body. Also, it can operate a wide range of temperatures, ranging from a minimum 0-degree Celsius to a maximum of 60 degrees Celsius. It can survive storage temperatures between -20 degrees Celsius to 85-degree Celsius.

Overall, I am happy with the build quality of Kingston's new Dual Portable SSD storage. But, please don't try to test its durability by stomping on it, driving a vehicle on it or dropping it from the top of a high-floor building. It also features good-quality caps on both sides of the port, and they fit firmly and don't come off that easily. It can survive accidental drops.

Performance

It comes with a USB 3.2 Gen 2 standard. When connected to any of the compatible devices, it can support amazing speeds, up to 1,050MB/s read and 950MB/s write.

It is a 3D NAND, three-dimensional Negative-AND (or Not AND) flash memory. It is a type of non-volatile flash memory where memory cells are stacked vertically in multiple layers, rather than arranged in a single flat (2D) plane.

Kingston Dual Portable SSD storage.

With this kind of stacking process, the company will be able to incorporate significantly higher storage densities. This ensures the storage drive supports higher capacity, faster data transfer speeds, and retains data even without power.

Kingston's Dual Portable SSD storage can connect with PCs running Microsoft's Windows 11, Apple Mac computers with v13.7.6, Chromebooks with ChomeOS and even Linux OS v4.4x or newer versions.

Kingston Dual Portable SSD storage.

Also, it supports mobile handsets and tablets with Android and iPhones/iPads with iOS/iPadOS 13.1 or newer versions.

The SSD storage, when connected to any of the supported devices, gets instantly detected, and users can transfer files, documents, PDFs, super high resolution photos and 4K videos very quickly.

Kingston Dual Portable SSD storage.

Overall, the experience has been really good. It is very easy to navigate through the phone and select files and move it the newly created folder in the Kingston storage drive.

Final thoughts

Kingston's new Dual Portable SSD storage is a very handy accessory to own for not just content creators, but also regular users. It can be used to instantly transfer high-resolution videos and photos and clear more space in the phone.

Also, thanks to the built-in USB Type-A port and Type-C port options, it can be connected to a PC or a smartphone and make the data transfer faster without any need to carry an extra cable in the travel organiser pouch.

Kingston Dual Portable SSD storage.

And, it is compatible with almost all major device platforms such as Apple Mac computers, Windows PCs, Linux OS, Android mobiles, iPads and iPhones.

The build quality is praiseworthy. Very impressed that the company is confident about its product, by offering five year warranty and technical support to the customer.

Kingston Dual Portable SSD storage connected to an Android phone.

However, the pricing is quite expensive compared to the current crop of conventional external SSDs.

Kingston Dual Portable SSD Storage comes in three options-- 512GB, 1TB and 2TB-- for Rs 15,889, Rs 23,759 and Rs 38,189, respectively, on Amazon.

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