Memory giant Kingston has announced its latest SSD, and in an departure from the norm it's a USB 3-powered external device.
The HyperX MAX 3.0 features a 2.5in SSD in an aluminium casing, designed for carrying around large quantities of data without having to worry about impact damage, and its USB 3 connection is claimed to keeps things ticking over quite nicely.
According to the company's own figures, the drives reads at a speed of up to 195MB/s and writes at up to 160MB/s when connected via a USB 3 port. If you hook the SSD up to a USB 2 port, the device will still work - but you won't get anywhere near the full speed of the device.
As an example of the real-world improvement offered by the USB 3 interface, Kingston carried out internal testing which showed that a 10GB file copied to the HyperX MAX in 1 minute 12 seconds over USB 3 while taking almost 6 minutes over USB 2.
The HyperX MAX 3.0 series will be available in 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB capacities - but the pricing means that they're a significant step above your average flash memory drive. The bottom-end model will retail in the US at $222, the 128GB at $365, and the top-end 256GB at a massive $746 - that's around £142, £233, and £477 respectively.
Sadly, Kingston has been less forthcoming on official UK pricing - but expect them to fetch a pretty penny when they land this side of the pond.
Do you think that this sort of device is a good idea, or do SSDs need to drop in price massively before they can be justifiable as a portable storage device? Share your thoughts over in the
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