WD_Black 4TB P50 SSD Reviewed – WD Intros 4TB Capacity of P50, Extreme and My Passport SSDs

This morning at CES (virtually), Western Digital has announced increased capacities in some of their top external storage devices, the My Passport SSD, the SanDisk Extreme and Extreme Pro, as well as their WD_Black P50 Game Drive NVMe SSD.  All four of these portable SSDs are going to be released in 4TB capacities by the end of February.  We have the P50 in hand and it hit our office 4000 km from Milpitas, California, in what has to be record time. This is what we opened the box to find…

It may not look that big but the 4TB P50 is secured within a very attractive protective casing P50 that measures 10″x6.5″x2.5″ and could easily pass perfectly for a handgun case because of its size.  This is what we found inside…

Inside we discovered this to be a very well laid out cable case, along with a WD_Black lanyard, USB Type C to Type A and Type C to Type C connector cables, and the newest WD_Black 4TB P50 Gaming Drive NVMe Portable SSD.  You may remember this SSD as we reviewed it in the 1TB capacity, along with the SanDisk Portable Pro SSD back in November, identifying that both were but two of the only USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 (20Gbps) portable SSDs on the market today.  They move data at 2GB/s vice the industry standard of 1GB/s we are seeing from USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) drives.

The P50 itself is capable of data transfer speeds of 2GB/s if you have a compatible PC, but also backwards compatible to 10Gbps speeds of 1GB/s if not.  USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 (20Gbps) is still fairly new and you might be lucky if you fins a single board with this connector through any of the motherboard manufacturers.  Twice the transfer speed of files though and the Orico PCIe 3.0 X4 ESB 3.2 gen 2×2 (20Gbps) adapter card can be found here for only $50….a very wise investment for cutting your media download times in half.

The exterior shell of the P50 is a flat black aluminum shell which which is fastened together by four small Torx.  Inside is a two sided version of the WD_Black SN730 NVMe SSD both sides which are affixed by thermal tape to the outer shell, making opening this SSD virtually impossible even with the screws removed.  In essence, the shell of the P50 gets warm when in use as it acts as a heatsink where the heat is forced to the outside of the P50 and dissipates.

MSRP for the 4TB versions of the 20Gbps WD_Black P50 and the SanDisk Extreme Pro is $749 and both will be available mid-February 2021.  MSRP for the 4TB versions of the 10Gbps My Passport SSD and the SanDisk Extreme Portable is $679.99 and $699.99.  Watch Amazon.

Let’s check out the speeds…