If you're a nature photographer who needs to back up files out in the field, then ruggedness and water resistance will be high on your priorities. This is really what things come down to when choosing a portable external drive, as different options are geared toward different users. How is your portable drive going to be used? If you want to make sure that you can benefit from the full speed of your external drive, you will need to check the specifications to see which type of USB port it has. Luckily, USB 3.2 is backwards compatible so even if you don't have the latest and greatest device to connect to, you will still be able to transfer your files, albeit at a slower pace. USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 - 20 Gbps (SuperSpeed 20Gbps).Unfortunately, the naming of these classifications isn't the most intuitive but here's how it breaks down:

Modern drives mostly rely on a USB type C connector but this only describes the shape of the connector and the actual speed can range anywhere up to 20 Gbps. This is where things start to get a little confusing, there's a variety of USB standards that offer varying levels of speed. It's just a faster and more modern style of SSD. Having an NVMe SSD won't affect compatibility, durability or anything else. We won't get bogged down in how it works or why it's faster, all you really need to know is that it's fast. You may see portable SSDs described as having NVMe storage, this is currently one of the fastest types of SSD available. The good news is that SSDs up to 1TB in capacity are more affordable than ever before, so if you don't need mountains of storage, SSD is definitely the way to go. They're way faster, smaller, more robust and use less power to operate, which is handy on the go. In an ideal world, we'd be using SSDs for everything. Whereas you can find HDDs up to around 5TB for less than £100/$100. If you need very high capacity storage, like above 2TB, then SSDs become extremely cost-prohibitive. Pocket-Lint Recommendation: Nintendo Switch.Pocket-Lint Recommendations: Xbox Console.

Pocket-Lint Recommendation: Google Nest.

Pocket-Lint Recommendation: Amazon Echo Devices.

Pocket-Lint Recommendations: Fire TV Stick.

Best mac external ssd