Glyph Atom Pro Portable Thunderbolt 3 NVME SSD V2 Revision: Rapid and realistic storage of Thunderbolt 3

Price when reviewed

$ 270 (1TB) | $ 390 (2TB) | $ 600 (4TB) | $ 1,400 (8TB)

The best prices today: Glyph Atom Pro Portable Thunderbolt 3 NVME SSD V2

$ 269.95

In a world that moves to USB4 and Thunderbolt 5, a SSD Thunderbolt 3 like Glyph’s atom Pro Portable Thunderbolt 3 NVME SSD V2 may seem a bit picturesque. It is not. So far, we have noticed little performance gain of the real world of the newest technologies, so this impulse is even more than competitive. We also like his appearance of stern in a path.

The ATOM Pro SSD is a small black aluminum monolith of approximately 4.3 inches long, 2.35 inches wide and an inch thickness. Weighs 5.7 naked ounces and 6.4 ounces with its silicone jacket. Outside the box, the jacket is in place and add a few millimeters in each dimension.

The ATOM Pro SSD is Thunderbolt 3 with NVME internals. It has only one type C port and a small power LED that looks through a small hole in the jacket. In general, it is elegant with premonization nuances, it looks like a serious kit. It also feels solid and the jacket gives you a good grip. A short C -type cable C. is provided

The glyph guarantees the unit for three years, with two years of recovering level one data.

Price

While a quality product awaited lower SSD prices, considering that Thunderbolt 5 and USB4 are winning traction. On the other hand, the atom Pro SSD is not a new product. Forgetting market analysis, it was sent at 1TB/$ 270, 2TB/$ 350, 4TB/$ 560 and 8TB/$ 1400 flavors on Amazon while I put this review in bed.

I like the ATOM Pro SSD, but I would be neglecting my journalistic duties if at least I would not mention this cheaper cheaper usb4 option. In addition, the new OWC ultra envoy of Thunderbolt 5 was just ten dollars more when writing this writing.

Performance

Being Thunderbolt 3, you know that the Atom Pro will be fast. The glyph populated my test unit with a 4TB WD SN850X inside. It is not as fast as the best qualified 8TB versionBut it is still a very fast SSD NVME.

With the SN850X on board, the ATOM Pro SSD showed that the third SSD MacWorld or SSD PCWorld has tried, and one of the units behind is the OWC Thunderblade Raid SSD in Raid 0, a safe performance booost.

The other impulse to overcome the atom pro ssd was the Sandisk Pro-G40 It was a close contest. Among all external SSDs, including Thunderbolt 4/5 and USB4 models, Glyph’s entrance was 11.

The BlackMagicdesign disc speed test showed a very balanced reading/writing performance of the ATOM Pro SSD, around 2.7 Gbps.

Amorphousdiskmark (Crystaldiskmark for Mac) described the atom Pro SSD as a faster reader, but anywhere about 3Gbps is fine for us.

Atto Disk Benchmark told almost the same story as the speed test of the disc and the amorphous marking, only more than 3Gbps reading and just writing.

I also executed the atom Pro SSD through the PCWorld MO test (for comparison and classification purposes) and, as noted, it did very well. Again, a reading of just over 3Gbps and just writing.

The performance of random writing reached an inconvenience under Crystaldiskmark 8. 21Mbps is a very low number, especially because the SN850x inside has dram for the primary cache.

In our 48 GB transfers of the real world, the ATOM pro proved to be an excellent reader, although only A very good writer.

The slightly slow writing hurt a little atom pro SSD in the writing of 450 GB, although it still averaged more than 1 Gbps.

Keep in mind that in the subsequent writings of 900 GB, the speed fell to approximately 600mbps, which is the native writing rate for the BICS 6 NAND TLC in the SN850X. I do not consider that a tragic deceleration, and how many times will it write more than 1 TB of data at the same time? We do it during the tests, but never more than that.

You may wonder how the ATOM Pro SSD is compared with the new Thunderbolt 5 OWC 5 Mistra Ultra. You can read more about the last numbers in the review, but in summary of a long story: at synthetic reference points, ultra shipping was supreme. In the transfers of the real world, however, there was simply so much difference.

A kind of sad state really. I did not include the Number Ultra numbers on the PCWorld lists, since they did not meet using the official test bed.

Should you buy the Glyph Atom Pro SSD?

If you are looking for a rapid external storage solution for your MAC, the ATOM Pro SSD certainly deserves an appearance. But I also recommend that you try to find it for sale and weigh all your options carefully.

How PCWORLD Try storage

The PCWorld unit tests described above currently use Windows 11, 64 bits that are executed on an X790 motherboard (PCIE 4.0/5.0)/CPU I5-12400 with two Kingston Fury 32GB DDR5 4800MHz (64 GB of total memory) modules. Both 20GBPS USB and Thunderbolt 4 are integrated into the posterior panel and intel CPU/GPU graphics are used. 48 GB transfer tests use an IMDISK RAM that occupies 58 GB of the 64 GB of total memory. The 450 GB file is transferred from a 2TB Samsung 990 Pro that also executes the operating system.

Each test is carried out in a freshly formatted and cut unit of NTFS so that the results are optimal. Keep in mind that in normal use, as a unit is filled, performance can decrease due to less NAND for secondary cache storage, as well as other factors. This can be a minor factor with the current SSD harvest with a lot of faster late generation.

Warning: The performance numbers that are shown apply only to the unit that the proven capacity already sent us. SSD’s performance can vary and vary according to the capacity due to more or less chips to shotgun readings/writings and NAND amount available for secondary cache storage. Suppliers also occasionally exchange components. If you ever notice a great discrepancy between the performance you experience and what wmy Report, by all means, let us know.