Kingston Dual Portable SSD review: Pocket-friendly performance

Best prices today: Kingson Dual Portable SSD

$96.99

USB sticks and flash drives provide a compact and convenient way to transport small amounts of data and files, but they tend to offer lower performance than SSDs, as well as more limited storage capacity. This means that USB drives aren’t ideal for managing larger files or performing regular Time Machine backups on your Mac. However, Kingston’s new Dual Portable SSD offers the best of both worlds, combining the compact design of a USB drive with the speed and capacity of an SSD.

In fact, the Dual Portable SSD is so small that Kingston describes it as an SSD “camouflaged like a USB drive.” It certainly looks the part, with a compact rectangular design that measures just 72mm long, 21mm wide and just 8.6mm thick. It’s about the same size as the 64GB Kingston USB flash drive that I often use for quick file transfers around my office, but it’s much faster and has a much larger storage capacity. You can easily slip it into your pocket when traveling, and it only weighs 13g, so you’ll barely notice it when you’re carrying it.

It’s sturdy, though, with a bright red metal casing that feels sturdy enough to handle life on the road. Kingston doesn’t quote an IP rating for weather resistance, so you should probably avoid getting it wet if possible, but the company is confident enough to provide a five-year warranty and the drive should be more than durable enough to handle general everyday use.

Kingston Technology

Dual drive

Most SSDs use a conventional USB cable to connect to your computers or mobile devices but, like a USB drive, the Dual Portable SSD has a USB interface built directly into the body of the drive. Or, to be precise, it has “dual” interfaces – hence the name – with a USB-A interface on one end of the drive and USB-C on the other end.

This ensures compatibility with a wide range of computers and mobile devices, although when plugged into a USB-C port on my MacBook Pro, the width of the drive meant it hid the MacBook’s adjacent USB-C port, which could be annoying if you have other USB devices, like a keyboard or mouse, that you also need to plug in. We were also a little concerned about the little plastic covers that protect the drive’s USB connectors, as these come off immediately and could easily get lost if you move around a lot.

The player works fine, though. It doesn’t support Thunderbolt, relying instead on USB 3.2 Gen 2, but Kingston quotes speeds of 950 MB/s for write performance and 1,050 MB/s for read performance. Our testing with the BlackMagic Disk Speed ​​Test showed that write speed was just right at 950 MB/s. Read performance was slightly slower at 920 MB/s, but that should still be fine for general everyday use when transferring files or for routine Time Machine backups on your Mac.

Kingston Technology

The ultra-compact design comes at a cost, however, and the Dual Portable SSD is a bit more expensive than other SSDs we’ve reviewed recently, including Kingston’s slightly larger XS1000.

Prices start at $125.89/£87.41 for a drive with 512GB of storage, although we tested the 1TB version which costs $143.99/£128.31. A 2TB option is also available, for $238.99/£211.93. No software comes with the player either. Kingston offers an app called SSD Manager, which provides basic functionality for monitoring drive health and performance, but it is currently only available for Windows PCs. This is not a problem for Mac users who can use Apple’s Disk Utility and Time Machine to provide diagnostic and backup functionality. However, some users may need a drive that includes an application that password-protects their files, as some Kingston competitors do.

Should you buy the portable dual SSD

Business users may prefer a faster drive that supports Thunderbolt to provide maximum performance for large graphics or video files, but the Dual Portable SSD’s USB performance is more than sufficient for routine tasks like file transfer and Time Machine backups. Its compact and sturdy design also makes it an ideal option for people who need a backup drive that they can quickly slip into their pocket while on the go.