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There are occasions while you want one of the best efficiency potential. It is often not low cost, however when it delivers, it may be essential to your fast-paced workflow. On this case, we’re taking a more in-depth take a look at the Fantom Drives eXtreme Thunderbolt 3 SSD, a drive that works flawlessly on Mac and iPad.
Construct and design
By way of design, the Fantom Drives eXtreme SSD has a minimalistic exterior with an all-metal enclosure that seems nearly seamless. The opposing sides have ribbed edges which act as easy warmth sinks.
It solely is available in a matte black anodized aluminum end, which does present oil out of your fingers however is in any other case straightforward to wipe off. The Fantom Drive emblem is printed on the middle of the highest, simply above the Thunderbolt icon.
Internally, Fantom is placing your information within the succesful palms of Western Digital. A 500GB, 1TB, or 2TB WD_Black PCIe Era 3 M.2 3D NAND NVMe module is inside every Excessive SSD enclosure. In our case, we’re utilizing the 1TB model. In principle, the 2TB mannequin ought to yield barely increased efficiency.
Bundled with the FD eXtreme is the requisite Thunderbolt 3 cable, measuring about ten inches lengthy. This is not the longest cable and in some conditions it could be just too quick. We have been in work environments on the go the place we’re very tight on house and an extended cable would assist put the drive the place it must go.
Nice for Mac, superior for iPad Professional
Another 12 months we would be touting this drive’s skill and efficiency for transportable Macs — however this 12 months, Apple introduced Thunderbolt 3 to the iPad Professional. After all we examined the drive’s speeds on the Mac, but in addition examined the way it labored on our pill.
We ran a number of rounds on the Blackmagic Disk Pace Check to see the way it in comparison with the corporate’s marketed speeds. Fantom Drives says you need to expertise as much as 2,800 Mbps in learn speeds and as much as 2,300 Mbps in write speeds. Within the Blackmagic take a look at, we noticed real-world speeds of 2260 MBps and 2500 MBps. That’s fairly good, particularly on the write speeds.
The drive got here pre-formatted in HSF+ which implies it’s plug-and-play on Mac. In the event you’d choose to format it in APFS, that’s doable as properly now that iPadOS totally helps APFS.
The Apple File System (APFS) was designed particularly to benefit from the advantages of SSDs so relying in your use case, it could be useful to reformat it as such.
On the 2021 iPad Professional, its sole type-C port now helps Thunderbolt 3 due to the addition of the Apple-designed M1 processor. When related, the drive instantly appeared for us within the Recordsdata app.
We have bemoaned a few of the points on iPadOS with the Recordsdata app, however Apple slowly and absolutely listened to and acted on these requests. With iPadOS 15 we noticed the added skill to look at and cancel file transfers whereas in Recordsdata in addition to a number of different enhancements on group. There is a option to go, however iPad simply provides versatility to this drive.
Must you purchase the Fantom Drives eXtreme Thunderbolt 3 SSD?
In actuality, most individuals do not want the velocity the Fantom Drives eXtreme Thunderbolt 3 SSD supplies. Most individuals might be pleased with commonplace SSDs and USB-C speeds however there’s a subset of area of interest professionals that do prioritize velocity.
This drive supplies that velocity.
It’s amazingly quick, has a strong construct high quality, is fully silent, and passively cooled. With iPad Professional adopting Thunderbolt this time round, it makes it much more useful as a result of you need to use this on a number of gadgets with out challenge.
In the event you fall into the class of professional customers who require beautiful speeds and dependable storage, Fantom Drives eXtreme Thunderbolt 3 SSD is price your consideration.
Professionals
- Easy, premium design with passive cooling
- Thunderbolt 3 cable included
- Bus powered
- Preformatted to work with Mac and iPad Professional
- Tremendous quick speeds
- Thunderbolt 3 compatibility
Cons
- Not the smallest SSD
- Steel might be fairly hefty
- Costly, particularly 2TB mode
Score: 4 out of 5
Seize your personal
You possibly can choose up the Fantom Drives eXtreme Thunderbolt 3 SSD on Amazon for $299 for the 1TB model, whereas the 500GB runs $229 and the 2TB is obtainable at a dear $529.
Assessment