Plextor EX1 external SSD with USB Type-C coming this month

The super-light and compact Plextor EX1 is the next step up in external drives as it moves away from the 2.5-inch form factor to a smaller M.2 size offering. Core specifications include:

• USB Type-C Gen. 2 (10 Gbps)
• 128/256/512 GB capacities
• Gold and Titanium Silver color options
• 101.2 x 31.6 x 8.7 mm
• 30 g

Sequential read and write speeds are rated at up to 550 MB/s and 500 MB/s, respectively, which is near the performance limit of the SATA III interface. This is not quite NVMe speeds, but still very fast for an external drive nonetheless.

Plextor is promising 3-year warranty and an operation time of 2.4 million hours or 1.5 million hours mean time between failures (MTBF). The EX1 will also support OTG on Android devices, which should prove very useful for those with smartphones that include no MicroSD support. Unfortunately, the manufacturer will not be including the necessary cable to connect to Android devices and recommends using the FAT32 file format, which is limited to 4 GB file sizes.

Plextor has not announced a final price for the EX1 even though it will supposedly ship out before the end of November. The packaging includes a single USB Type-C to Type-A cable only.

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