Last Updated on 01/14/2018 by Mark Beckenbach
Fast, Durable, Portable Was the Name of the Game for WD and SanDisk At CES 2018
When you are a traveling photographer one of the most annoying things is having to work off of slow external hard drives if your laptop doesn’t have the space to hold the images from your shoot. In the case of videographers, this is even more troublesome because trying to watch and edit videos in a video editor from a slower external HDD can be enough to drive one mad.
But at CES 2018 WD and SanDisk together unveiled two products that will be of particular note to photographers and other traveling creatives.
The MyPassport Wireless brand from WD has been around for a while now, and by many accounts, the current PRO version is a really helpful tool for pros who want to back up data on the go without needing a laptop. But announced today is the new WD MyPassport Wireless SSD, which is basically the MyPassport Wireless Pro with an internal SSD rather than a slower HDD. The benefit here is that not only will transferring files from SD cards (via the built-in SD card slot) to the drive be faster overall but simply using the drive while connected to your computer will be many times faster too. Additionally, the unit can act as a sort of emergency battery with its included 2.4A power output which you could use to charge your phone or other USB powered devices. The MyPassport Wireless SSD will come in four flavors ranging from 250GB to 2TB, and $229 to $799. WD expects these units to be available come February 15th. If you are interested you can get more information on the WD MyPassport Wireless over on the WD website, here.
SanDisk, which in case you need the reminder – is owned by WD now, also announced a new portable SSD option with their new Portable Extreme SSD. These are fast SSD units enclosed in a strong, durable, weather and shockproof enclosure that will allow for reading speeds of up to 550MB/s when utilizing a sufficiently fast USB 3.1 Gen II or Thunderbolt 3 port on your computer.
Similarly to the WD MyPassport Wireless SSD, the SanDisk unit will feature four capacity options ranging from 250GB to 2TB and pricing from $99 to $349 (for the 1TB, pricing on the 2TB is not yet listed). The 1TB model will be available as soon as January 16th, while the 250GB and 500GB models will not come until February and the 2TB model isn’t expected out until March.
You can get more details about the SanDisk Portable Extreme SSD over on the Sandisk website, here.