Sabrent Rocket XTRM-Q 2TB Portable SSD Review

TweakTown's Rating: 95%

The Bottom Line

Consumers on the market for a high capacity, high performance portable SSD solution will want to put the Sabrent Rocket XTRM-Q on the short list as it's the only drive you will ever need!

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Over the past few months, Sabrent is probably the most searched vendor on TweakTown, and it seems every time we are calm from a new release, whether internal or external, one is right around the corner.

With the Rocket Nano, Pro, and XTRM in the books, we had seemingly caught up with Sabrent's portfolio having covered all the internal solutions as well, but as the Rocket Q was launched with capacities up to 8TB, we knew it was only a matter of time for QLC to go external.

The XTRM-Q is just that, Rocket Q with a sleek new enclosure that now sports an almost black yet gunmetal colorway, all-aluminum construction again like the XTRM. Setting this solution apart from all others is connectivity with XTRM-Q supporting Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3.2, a first in the industry.

Marketing performance offers 2700 MB/s over Thunderbolt 3, with USB 3.2 peaking at 900 MB/s. Compatibility includes Windows, macOS, and Linux operating systems. MSRP of the 2TB Sabrent Rocket XTRM-Q comes in at $449.99 with a three-year warranty.

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Anyone that has seen our reviews of the XTRM line from Sabrent will recognize the packaging.

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Inside, we find the drive tucked away in its own foam slot cables to the right boxed up.

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Included with the XTRM-Q, we find both a Thunderbolt 3 cable and a USB-C to A cable.

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Mentioned briefly in the opening words, the XTRM-Q is offered in this dark gunmetal/black colorway. Still an all-aluminum design with branding along the bottom and Thunderbolt logo at the top.

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Here we find the Type-C connector for both Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3.2 connections.

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CDM is a staple in performance testing; version 7 has seen some updates in the workloads used for testing. Testing for the XTRM-Q starts with USB 3.2 Gen 2 or SuperSpeed 10Gbps, whatever you'd like to call it. That said, we found read performance topped out at 1079 MB/s with write a touch higher at 1089 MB/s.

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Still within CDM, now moving to Thunderbolt 3 for the interface, we find performance up a notch to 2918 MB/s read and 1957 MB/s write.

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A new test, PCMark10 Data Drive is aimed at external storage solutions. We were able to run numbers for a number of solutions still in house, adding the XTRM-Q at the end. The XTRM-Q was slightly quicker than the 4TB XTRM, scoring 2898 with bandwidth of 432 MB/s.

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New to our testing is a 200GB data transfer that aims to weed out drives that lose performance during backup scenarios. Surprisingly, the XTRM-Q set the bar a bit higher in this test too transferring to the 200GB in 3.5 minutes.

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Price/Performance again has the XTRM-Q at the top for all Thunderbolt 3 drives tested.

Sabrent has shaken the storage industry up with release after release. The XTRM-Q takes this further as the first solution to support USB 3.2 and Thunderbolt 3 with a single connector and the first single drive 8TB solution that's bus-powered. Quality, too, is on top, with a solid aluminum enclosure, anodized black colorway, and legit internals.

The performance was quite good, I'm not sure I've ever seen a Thunderbolt 3 drive hit 2900 MB/s read, but this single drive solution does that quite easily. USB 3.2 performance was equally good, rated at 900 MB/s we easily hit 1079 MB/s with our system. PCMark10 charts show both Thunderbolt 3 and 10Gbps USB 3.2 performance along with legacy 3.0 numbers for those interested in comparing.

Our sustained write testing put the XTRM-Q on a third level by beating Sabrent's own 4TB XTRM by a full two minutes, and price/performance was the icing on the cake bringing all that performance together at a solid price point to take the top slot.

Pricing of the Sabrent XTRM-Q for the 2TB capacity has an MSRP of $449.99. As of this writing, Amazon is offering this drive at a significant discount while in pre-order.

Tyler's Test System Specifications

• Motherboard: ASUS Maximus Z370 (buy from Amazon)
• CPU: Intel Core i7 8700K (buy from Amazon)
• RAM: Corsair Dominator 16GB DDR4 3000 (buy from Amazon)
• Cooler: ASUS Ryujin 360 (buy from Amazon)
• Case: ASUS Helios (buy from Amazon)
• OS Storage: Sabrent Rocket 4.0 1TB (buy from Amazon)
• Power Supply: ASUS Thor 1200w (buy from Amazon)
• OS: Microsoft Windows 10 (buy from Amazon)