WD My Passport SSD 1TB USB 3.2 Gen 2 Review

The My Passport from Western Digital goes back over a decade, enduring all the changes the market has faced, such as capacity and interface upgrades, along the way. The latest model is the second-generation portable SSD redesigned from the ground up.

The My Passport SSD is offered in four new colorways; gold, red, blue, and gray, all featuring a new enclosure design inspired by the last generation. Capacity options include 500GB at the bottom and 2TB at the top with a quick stop at 1TB for our sample.

Performance is rated at 1050 MB/s taking advantage of USB 3.2 Gen 2 behind the USB-C interface. Additional features include password protection with hardware encryption along with shock and vibration resistance.

MSRP of the WD My Passport SSD in the 1TB capacity comes in at $199.99 with a five-year warranty.

Box art is quite similar to the last My Passport SSD, yellow and white, with the drive's image. At the top, we find capacity and performance together.

Unboxing, the Passport comes complete with a USB-C cable and adapter for Type-A connections. The enclosure is now an all-metal design, WD branding at the top.

The bottom edge of the drive houses the USB-C connection.

Opening the drive, you will find the internal drive and USB-C PCB together with thermal pads, an identical design to the new SanDisk Extreme we recently reviewed.

Mentioned above, the My Passport shares its internal design with the new SanDisk Extreme. Both drives use the WD SN550e internally.

For software, WD uses its own dashboard software. This software allows you to schedule backups and enable password protection via the WD Security application.

CDM is a staple in performance testing; version 7 has seen some updates in the workloads used for testing. Sequentials are on par with marketing; 1043 MB/s read and 1013 MB/s write at Q8.

Throwing a larger workload at the My Passport, we see almost identical performance, 1044 MB/s read and 1016 MB/s write.

Pushing the My Passport through Data Drive, we see yet another drive, as expected, push past the Rocket Pro from Sabrent with a score of 1462.

Our 200GB file transfer test has been quite successful at weeding out drives that show solid initial performance falling off a cliff when you put it to use. The My Passport SSD comes away from this test as one of the best we have seen, landing on our charts in the fifth spot.

Price/Performance for the My Passport SSD puts the drive just above the SL100 Pro from Lexar and right behind the Extreme from SanDisk.

The new design of the My Passport SSD gives consumers yet another top of the line option with a full metal enclosure, louvered design aesthetics, and additional colorways. The internal design is proven, an identical setup to the Extreme SSD reviewed earlier this month.

Performance in CDM was on par with marketing numbers, 1044 MB/s read and 1016 MB/s write while our 200GB file transfer showed this drive is legit and ready to be put to work, one of the best we have seen. PCMark testing added to the accolades for this solution with a score of 1462 slightly quicker than the Rocket Pro from Sabrent.

Pricing of the 1TB My Passport SSD carries that slightly higher $199.99 MSRP, but we expect market pricing to be lower. That said, it's right in line with the new SanDisk Extreme and Seagate FAST, which offers SATA based performance for the same money.

Tyler's Test System Specifications

• Motherboard: ASUS Crosshair VIII Formula X570 (buy from Amazon)
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 (buy from Amazon)
• RAM: Corsair Vengeance 16GB 2x8GB DDR4 3600 (buy from Amazon)
• Cooler: Corsair Hydro H60 (buy from Amazon)
• Case: Corsair Carbide 275R (buy from Amazon)
• OS Storage: Corsair MP600 1TB (buy from Amazon)
• Power Supply: Corsair RM850x (buy from Amazon)
• OS: Microsoft Windows 10 (buy from Amazon)