INTRODUCTION

   Due to all the recent price drops largely thanks to very high levels of NAND flash availability many portable SSD (solid state drives) models of all shapes and sizes have been released lately by both large and small storage media manufacturers. Unfortunately as we've stated numerous times in past reviews it will be long before SSDs can rival the price/capacity performance of HDDs but things are looking better than ever right now especially since certain manufacturers have even started using 3D NAND flash in their USB 3.1 Gen 2 solutions for even higher read & write performance numbers. Kingston's HyperX division is one such manufacturer and today we'll be testing their brand new Savage EXO 480GB USB 3.1 Gen 2 Portable Solid-State Drive.

   HyperX is the gaming division of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., the world’s largest independent memory manufacturer, with the goal of providing gamers, PC builders, and power users with high-performance components. For 15 years, the HyperX mission has been to develop gaming products for gamers – high-speed memory, solid state drives, headsets, keyboards, mice, USB flash drives, and mouse pads – to the gaming community and beyond. The award-winning HyperX brand has carved its name atop the leaderboard by consistently delivering products that deliver superior comfort, aesthetics, performance, and reliability. HyperX gear is the choice of pro gamers, tech enthusiasts, and overclockers worldwide because it meets the most stringent product specifications and is built with best-in-class components. HyperX has shipped over 3 million headsets worldwide.

   As mentioned earlier under the hood of the brand new Savage EXO USB 3.1 Gen 2 Portable SSD (currently available in 480/960GB capacities) HyperX placed Toshiba's BiCS 64L 3D TLC NAND flash which they paired with 512MB LPDDR3 cache and the 88SS1074 quad-channel NAND flash controller by Marvell which features SLC cache (pseudo-SLC), partial power loss protection, active garbage collection, redundant array of independent NAND (RAIN), LDPC error correction code (ECC), adaptive thermal protection, data-path protection, multistep data integrity algorithm and fully supports DevSleep (power save), TRIM, SMART, AES 256-bit hardware encryption, TCG Opal 2.0 and IEEE-1667 (fully compatible with Microsoft's eDrive and EU's GDPR). Design is also one of the things that make the Savage EXO drive stand out since thanks to the M.2 2280 SSD placed inside (HyperX has used the ASM235CM SATA III to USB 3.1 Gen 2 chip) it looks nothing like most portable SSDs out in the market today. Finally HyperX reports an endurance number of 1 million hours MTFB for the Savage EXO Portable SSD and covers it with a 3-year limited warranty.