Crucial X8 1TB Portable SSD - $107

sleepyhound wrote: ↑ Just bought the 2TB X6 on Black Friday deal which was only $22 less than the current 2TB X8 price. The X6 is fine for how I'm using it (keeping macOS Photos library on it connected to Mac Mini), but for only $22 more I would have gone with the X8 at the time. Personally I think the 2TB version is a much better deal, but for people that only need 1TB it's still a great price, less expensive than the Samsung T7 and I believe basically on par with performance, but someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

Good post OP, upvoted.

The X8, on the other hand, performs admirably with the SLC cache - For around 256GB of continuous writes, the drive provides 825 MBps+ of bandwidth before slipping down to around 150 MBps for the direct-to-QLC writes. The reason for the X8's stellar performance for normal workloads lies in this SLC cache. Normal workloads rarely go beyond this huge cache, and that is enough to make the X8 lead the charts in almost all tests. The problem is when the SLC cache runs out - as is possible for creative professionals transferring huge work files. Crucial does mention read-intensive workloads as the main focus of the drive, and hence folks with those types of workloads may well prefer SSDs such as the SanDisk Extreme PRO v2.