SanDisk Professional 2TB PRO-G40 SSD 2700MB/s

The Sandisk Professional PRO-G40 supports both Thunderbolt and USB. This allows you to access your data super-fast on a Thunderbolt or USB4-enabled device, but it is also simply compatible with devices with slower USB ports. Thus, the SSD offers the best of both worlds, with the only real drawback being its very hefty price.

Pros

• Super fast
• USB 3.2 compatible
• Sturdy, compact housing
• Five-year warranty

Cons

• Quite expensive

Speed

With this versatility, however, there are a few points to consider: The Pro-G40 only achieves the maximum possible transfer speed via a Thunderbolt Type-C coection. With TB 3, the theoretical maximum speed corresponds to 40 GBit/s. If the external SSD is plugged into the USB 3.2 Gen2 port, it falls back to a speed of 10 GBit/s already due to the standard.

In the test, the Sandisk model delivered top values on both interface standards in the benchmark runs with the Crystaldiskmark (CDM) tool: Coected via the TB-3 port, the read rates are consistently over 3000 MB/s - regardless of whether the programme is used in version 6, 7 or 8. The write rates are also very high - in the best case, the value is 2683 MB/s. On the Type-C port with USB 3.2 Gen2, the external drive reads in the range of almost 1068 MB/s (CDM 6) to 1093 MB/s (CDM 8) and writes between 1053 MB/s (CDM 6) and 1080 MB/s (CDM 8). These are impressive data rates across the board.

The high transfer performance is also noticeable, as the case heats up to over 37 degrees Celsius on the surface during the test. In addition, the power consumption values are comparatively high, with 2.6 watts in idle and 5.8 watts under load. Our test device has the internal NVMe SSD WD_ Black SN750E, which has a PCI Express 3.0 interface.

Thunderbolt features

In Windows use, a Type-C port with Thunderbolt specification behaves differently from a USB 3.2x Type-C port. This is also confirmed in the test of the Sandisk model. When first coected to the computer, the external data carrier must first be recognised by the Thunderbolt software and actively confirmed by the user. However, this does not mean that the external SSD is also immediately fully recognised by the operating system. Instead, we must reformat it via the data carrier management and assign it a drive letter. After that, a restart of the test PC is necessary to use the drive under Windows fully.

Well protected

The Sandisk Professional Pro-G40 SSD has robustly constructed: a rubber coating on three sides of the housing protects the device from shocks. The IP68 protection class also identifies the housing as dustproof and water-resistant.

The external drive package includes a TB-3 cable, which is twenty centimetres long. The manufacturer's warranty of five years is comparatively generous. Extra tools are not available directly on the storage medium. Still, they can be downloaded from the manufacturer's support page - including WD Dashboard for SSD management and WD Utilities for formatting and deleting.

Conclusion

Given the very high data rates that the external NVMe SSD achieves both on the Thunderbolt 3 port and via USB 3.2 Gen2, it is recommended for power users who regularly copy large amounts of data back and forth under time pressure.

However, the performance costs a lot of money. Despite lower prices in stores, this external NVMe SSD remains a very expensive all-rounder.