Introduction & Drive Details
TeamGroup's newest portable SSD has made its way onto our bench. This portable has just about everything we want to see from such a device. A slim and attractive military-themed enclosure. Super-fast at 2,000 MB/s throughput, included Type-C to C cable, Type-C to A cable, and a 5-year warranty. The T-Force M200 is based on the increasingly popular USB 3.2 Gen2 x2 20 Gbps interface, and for the first time, we've seen in a portable, a Phison E16 (Gen4) controlled QLC SSD with DRAM cache.
TeamGroup's T-Force M200 series is aimed at prosumers who are willing to pay a premium for fast capacious portable storage as evidenced by its interface, available capacity points of 2TB, 4TB, 8TB, and a lengthy 5-year warranty period. The internal SSD is kept running at throttle-free temps by TeamGroup's patented graphene cooling technology.
Enclosure Details
We really like what TeamGroup has done with the M200's plastic and metal enclosure. We like its slim tactical design, slip-resistant textured stripes, and integrated military-style hanging hole. The drive has a nice heft and a quality feel in hand. It's easy to see why the M200 is a recipient of a 2021 Good Design Award.
Jon's Test System Specifications - Intel Z590
Note: For USB 3.2 Gen2 x2 SSDs, we test on our Z590 system set to match our Intel NUC 11 specs (4.8GHz, 8-threads, DDR4 3200, balanced power plan).
Synthetic Benchmarks: CDM, ATTO & Blackmagic
CrystalDiskMark
CrystalDiskMark testing verifies the M200 is capable of delivering throughput of up to 2,100 MB/s. We don't chart random performance, but it is among the best we've seen for a portable device. With random read performance like that, you can rest assured this portable will work exceptionally well as a gaming SSD, whether it be running at 5 Gbps or 20 Gbps or anywhere between. Excellent.
ATTO
Nearly full speed at 128KB transfers and a good consistent pattern that doesn't show any signs of throttling as transfer sizes increase. Excellent. The T-Force M200 delivers the highest 128K read/write transfer rates we've witnessed to date for a USB 3.2 Gen2 x2 interface when tested against ATTO. Impressive.
Blackmagic
As anticipated, the T-Force M200 2TB can competently handle all media formats thrown its way by Blackmagic Disk Speed Test. In fact, the M200 puts forth the best numbers we've seen from a USB-based portable storage device as measured by Blackmagic.
Real-World Testing: PCMark 10 & Transfer Rates
PCMark 10 Data Drive Benchmark
Outstanding performance here, again the best we've seen from any SSD over the USB interface. Look at that score, it's double what we are getting the similarly interfaced WD Black P50 or XS2000 can deliver. This thing is more than capable of handling data drive duties at a high level.
Transfer Rates
This 2TB portable has a huge SLC cache, somewhere in the neighborhood of 400GB, so it's no surprise that the Phison E16 powered MP200 delivers the highest transfer rate for a USB interfaced portable we've seen to date.
Our very hard-to-digest write transfer comprises more than 62K files and is notoriously hard to digest, but not a problem for the M200 as it fits easily within the drive's pseudo-SLC cache. If we were to run into QLC, the transfer rate would drop big time, but it is very unlikely most users will ever encounter writing to QLC directly.
Read transfer is among the highest rates we've ever seen from a USB interfaced SSD. In fact, the only USB interfaced SSD we've tested to date that is faster is Kingston's XS2000 1TB. Impressive.
Final Thoughts
Overall, we would have to say TeamGroup's M200 is easily the fastest USB interfaced SSD we've tested to date. It is also the first time we've seen a Phison E16 controlled portable.
We thought maybe the E16 controller, being it is Gen4 and tends to run hotter than Gen3 controllers, could cause us to encounter some throttling issues, but that never materialized. TeamGroup's patented graphene cooling technology effectively combatted any heat issues.
TeamGroup's M200 portable SSD is a masterpiece as we see it and is worthy of our highest award.
Pros
- Speed
- Portability
- 5-year warranty
Cons
- Need to use USB Type-A for some devices
Performance |
100% |
Quality |
95% |
Features |
90% |
Value |
90% |
Overall |
94% |
Overall the fastest USB interfaced SSD we've tested.
What's in Jon's PC?
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 7800X 3D
- MOTHERBOARD: GIGABYTE AORUS Master X670E
- RAM: Kingston Fury Renegade 7200MHz 32GB
- GPU: ZOTAC AMP Extreme GeForce RTX 4090
- SSD: Crucial T700 2TB Gen5
- OS: Windows 11 Pro
- COOLER: Lian Li Galahad 360 AIO
- CASE: Lian Li Lancool III
- KEYBOARD: Corsair K65 RGB Mini
- MOUSE: SteelSeries AEROX 5 Wireless
- MONITOR: ASUS ROG Strix PG27AQN 360Hz 1440p ULMB2
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