Having a massive amount of ultra-fast storage that you can slip into your pocket makes sharing or backing up files much easier, and today we’ve found a great deal on a drive that impressed us on the test bench. Amazon is selling the 1TB Crucial X8 portable SSD for $115—its lowest price yet.
We reviewed the Crucial X8 a year ago, calling it “a great performer the vast majority of the time” and “an affordable alternative to Samsung’s T5 and Sandisk’s Ultra Portable.” This external SSD comes with a three-year warranty, and supports sequential read speeds up to 1,050 megabytes per second. In our tests, the Crucial X8 fell just a hair shy of that number—not unusual—while write speeds hit 1,010 MB/s.
Note, however, that the Crucial X8 slowed down considerably during extremely long file writes in our tests, with speeds plummeting once we’d moved 190GB of data. That means this external drive won’t be the best option for anyone who regularly makes very large file transfers, such as video editors working with 4K or 8K videos. For everyday use, however, the Crucial X8 is flat-out excellent (and fantastically fast).
The drive comes in black anodized aluminum case that looks good, feels good in your hand and your pocket, and can survive drops up to 7.5 feet. The Crucial X8 supports blazing-fast USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C connections, and can fall back to slower USB speeds if your PC doesn’t support USB 3.2.
The Crucial X8 is a very good external SSD that impressed us mightily, and today it’s available at its best price yet. What more needs to be said? Hop on this deal if you’re even remotely interested.