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As a wildlife photographer, I can tell you that the most frustrating thing has always been how camera companies lag behind. It has to with media transfer and manipulation. Storage… and more specifically… flash storage has moved forward rapidly but camera companies haven’t kept up. I just can’t bear it and neither can Grey Eyes here.
The storage speed of media within camera equipment is not 25% of that accomplished by removing the storage medium, placing it into an external reader and transferring the photos or video that way. This remains to be that frustrating extra step but the latest and greatest of USB helps things along. ProGrade Digital has sent along what can only be described as a massive Thunderbolt 4/USB 4 storage collection of their latest products and we are going to spend some time showing them off.
What we see here is probably the most complete and advanced collection of media products that has shown up on our door step in some time. The closest complete package to this might have been the SanDisk Pro-Blade Station And it achieves Thunderbolt 3 speeds of 2.8GB/s, vice the new USB4 standard of 5GB/s. Both use 40Gbps data transfer, however the newer USB4 accomplishes two things; faster speeds and Thunderbolt 5 plug and play compatibility.
The package received from ProGrade Digital includes the ProGrade PG20 USB4 Pro Hub,PGM12 Single Slot USB4 CFExpress Type-A Memory Card Reader, Single Slot USB4 CFExpress TypeB Memory Card Reader, a two-pack of USB4 40Gbps flex cables, PG10 4TB External Solid State 4.0 Workflow Drive, PG10.5 4.0 2TB External Mini Solid State Workflow Drive, 1.6TB CFexpress Cobalt 4.0 Type-B Memory Card, PGD Gold 2TB CFExpress Type-B 4.0 Memory Card, and the Gold 480GB CFExpress 2.0 Type-A VPG 200 Memory Card.
That is alot of gear and what’s sure to be at least six separate reports. Is it worth the time? More than doubling the speed of my CFExpress-B download with an additional compact storage medium on the road is more than worth it. Let’s tackle it this way. We will do the peripherals in this report (Hub, Readers and Cables), and then separate reports on the 4TB and 2TB external drives before tackling the 2TB, 1.6TB and 480GB memory cards. If you just can’t wait, check out ProGrade Digital 4.0 pricing at Amazon.
PROGRADE DIGITAL PG20 PRO THUNDERBOLT 4 HUB
Without a doubt, the top feature of the storage industries move to Thunderbolt 4 is that it is plug and play USB4 compatible, and vice versa. I can’t tell you how many times I have plugged in a high speed external device to only have it limited to 10Gbps or 1050MB/s. There has always been tangible give and take with mixing and matching Thunderbolt 3 with lower end USB devices. Along comes the PG20 Pro Thunderbolt 4 Hub to start things off.
The PG20 comes with the Thunderbolt 4 multi-connector Hub, power adapter, ProGrade Digital adhesive metal plate for easy magnetic mounting on any surface, and a 0.8m Thunderbolt 4 cable.
The top has a magnetic base for perfect pairing of two added readers, the 2TB Mini or 4TB Solid State Workflow Drive, which by the way can then have additional readers magnetically paired on top of them.
The back has three 15w (40Gbps) downstream ports and one 85w charging upstream Thunderbolt 4/USB4 port. There is also a power switch and additional USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port (10Gbps) on the front. One observation we have made in the use of this setup is that it is best to turn it on and then off by the Hub as needed.
We left all connected when downloading these shots from the CFRxpress-B card yesterday and found out that things get rather hot when left on for any length of time. It reminded me of removing early versions of the CFExpress B card from my Canon R5 on first release.
The ProGrade Digital PG20 ProHub is priced on Amazon for $144 at the time of this report.