INTRODUCTION

   When the very first portable SSDs made their appearance in the market roughly a decade ago, they impressed everyone with their compact size and impressive performance numbers. Since then, portable SSDs may not have gotten a lot smaller but they've certainly improved in two very important areas, capacity and performance. Up until a few years back ultra-high performance portable SSDs with numbers surpassing 10Gbps (1000MB/s) required thunderbolt connectivity but the somewhat recent arrival of USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 changed all that allowing portable SSDs to hit speeds of up to 20Gbps (2000MB/s). The latest ZX20 Portable SSD by Netac is one such drive and that's what I’ll be testing today.

   Started in May 1999, Netac Technology (Stock Code at Shenzhen Exchange: 300042) is a leading flash memory manufacturer based in Shenzhen. Through more than ten years' growth, Netac was successfully listed in Growth Enterprise Market in January 2010, becoming the first listed removable storage supplier in China. Netac is the trademark used for our USB flash memory products. As the inventor of flash memory and a leading new-generation storage product manufacturer, Netac possesses the first generation of USB-based flash memory technology in the world. We focus on manufacturing of flash memory products, such as USB flash storage, portable hard drive and solid state disk, especially on security and encryption of USB flash storage and portable hard drive. We have a wholly-owned production base for processing of all flash storage products. At present, Netac Technology (Hong Kong) Limited and Leapro Technology Co., Ltd. are two fully subsidiary companies of Netac Technology Co., Ltd. Leapro Technology Co., Ltd is the holder of the SD-3C license.

   Just like with the Blaze SL660 model by Lexar which i reviewed a while back the ZX20 by Netac (available in 512GB/1TB capacities) is also based on the quad-channel (32 CEs) SM2320G NAND flash controller by Silicon Motion (once again this controller fully supports their latest NANDXtend ECC end-to-end data path protection together with real time AES 256-bit encryption for full compliance with the Trusted Computing Group - TCG Opal 2.0 specification) which this time is paired with 128-layer 3D TLC NAND flash (rebranded). In order to create a more compact and light weight portable SSD Netac has used plastic for the enclosure which however is not rugged. So, time to see just what one can expect from the latest ZX20 2TB Portable SSD by Netac.