SanDisk Professional PRO-G40 SSD review: No-brainer, but expensive

The SanDisk Professional PRO-G40 SSD is a portable storage device with rugged design and blazing fast speeds. It supports Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3.2 Gen 2 for consistent experience

Solid state drives are silent, fast, and long-lasting. Therefore, professionals for storage needs prefer them – even if there is a premium on the price compared to traditional hard disk drives. Among the best available SSDs in 2023 is the SanDisk Professional PRO-G40 SSD.

The SanDisk Professional PRO-G40 SSD is geared to Apple Mac users, but can be reformatted to work on both Windows laptops and Mac. This thing is portable, rugged, and blazing fast. It has a USB-C interface with support for Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3.2 Gen 2. It has a metal enclosure with silicon bumper for protection against accidental drops damages. Besides, the unit is IP68 rated for water and dust protection. It is a portable unit (M.2 2280). The wholesome package has a matching price starting at Rs 34,999 for 1TB storage variant that covers for five-year limited warranty too.

Details aside, the SanDisk Professional PRO-G40 SSD comes pre-formatted in APFS – a macOS drive format that natively supports Mac Time Machine backups. It essentially means you can plug it in the supported USB-C port on the Apple Mac computers and start using it. But, it needs reformatting if you have a Windows PC. It is because APFS is Apple exclusive and Windows operating system does not detect the drive as a storage unit unless it is reformatted in supported formats such as NTFS, FAT32, exFAT. Reformat the drive in the exFAT if you want to use it interchangeably on Apple Mac and Windows PC.

Reformatting may not look like a big deal as both Apple Mac and Windows PC have built-in tools for it. However, it is tricky to get the SanDisk Professional PRO-G40 SSD reformatted. It is because Apple Mac does not provide the option to reformat the drive in another format but APFS and APFS (encrypted) and the Windows PC does not recognise the drive as storage in APFS format. There is a workaround to reformat the drive on Windows PC using the command-line prompt, but it requires some tech awareness.

Next comes the performance. The SanDisk Professional PRO-G40 SSD impresses with the blazing fast read and write speeds on both the USB 3.2 Gen 2 and Thunderbolt 3 platforms. The speeds (1,050MBps read and 1,000MBps write) on the USB 3.2 Gen 2 are about half of what you get on Thunderbolt 3 (2,378MBps read and 2,007MBps write). Therefore, it is best experienced on the Thunderbolt 3 interface.

Verdict

The SanDisk Professional PRO-G40 SSD is a portable storage device that impresses with its rugged design and blazing fast speeds. It supports dual interfaces – Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3.2 Gen 2 – for consistent experience on a large set of computers. It is a no-brainer for professionals, but the expensive price tag may play a dampener.