SanDisk Extreme Pro Dual review: A versatile, sturdy 10Gbps flash drive

Best Prices Today: SanDisk Extreme Pro Dual flash drive

It’s a frustrating experience when the only port on the device you want to connect to is Type-A, and your connecting device is Type-C. Or vice versa. Hope you brought an adapter.

Yeah, it’s a fiddling problem, but can be a real time-waster and it’s one that many vendors have addressed with dual Type-A/Type-C drives such as the SanDisk Extreme Pro Dual that’s reviewed here.

Read on to learn more, then see our roundup of the best external drives for comparison.

What are the SanDisk Extreme Pro Dual’s features?

The Extreme Pro Dual measures approximately 3.2 inches long (including connector), 0.65-inches wide, and 0.4-inches thick. It weighs a bit more than most at 1.2 ounces — largely because of the sturdy metal housing that the drive portion rotates inside of. The weight gives it a pleasant, solid heft.

You swivel the drive inside said housing to expose either the Type-A or Type-C (one is always out in the open). The drive clicks into place if you orient the connectors parallel to the housing, but you can have both exposed (see the lead image) if you choose.

The Extreme Pro Dual is 10Gbps 3.x Gen 2 USB (around 1GBps transfers optimally) and the NAND is late generation if my tests are accurate. While the write rate drops, it’s only to around 350MBps.

SanDisk warranties the Extreme Pro Dual for life (limited). That’s a bit of a shocker, as most external drives carry a three-year, or more rarely, a five-year warranty. I’m assuming the “limited” is based on the number of writes possible and not running it over with a Zamboni.

But the company rightly figures there’s no way you can write enough data to exceed the NAND’s write-cycle limit. Whatever the logic, I like it and it does warrant the “Pro” in the moniker.

How much is the SanDisk Extreme Pro Dual?

At the time of this writing the Extreme Pro Dual was available on Amazon in 256GB/$55, 512GB/$73, and 2TB/$180 capacities. The 1TB version I tested was $110 on SanDisk’s website, and as the rest of the prices were the same, I would expect Amazon to sell 1TB for that price as well, when it’s available.

How are those prices comparatively? A tad high actually, especially when the most excellent Teamgroup X2 Max is cheaper.

How fast is the SanDisk Extreme Pro Dual?

While not on par with Teamgroup’s X2 Max, the Extreme Pro Dual put in a credible performance — in most cases. It’s actually capable of better write numbers than those shown for CrystalDiskMark 8 (over 900MBps), but only when using a 32GiB or smaller data set. Our test unit was 1TB. The 2TB unit would no doubt have put in better numbers, though likely still not as good as the X2 Max’s.

As we test all drives with the 64GiB data set, those are the numbers you see below. Sorry SanDisk.

The Extreme Pro Dual’s random performance under CrystalDiskMark was much better than what you see below, but only, again, with 32GiB and smaller data sets.

With the 1TB version of the drive I tested, writing 48GB went beyond the allotted secondary cache. The numbers are directly below, followed by a screenshot of the drive slowing down during the 48GB write process.

There’s just not a lot of secondary cache on board the Extreme Pro Dual, as you can see in this screen grab of the Windows Explorer copy process.

Compared to any drive but the PNY Duo Link V3, the Extreme Pro Dual would rate as slow writing 450GB. But while it lost out to the excellent Teamgroup X2 Max, 20 minutes is not horrible for a thumb drive. The native write rate is over 350MBps, which isn’t comedically tragic like the PNY’s 15MBps.

The PNY was also a 1TB drive, while the X2 Max was 2TB which gives is more NAND for secondary caching. However, the X2 Max’s native write rate was double the Extreme Pro Dual’s and would’ve cleaned its clock regardless.

The NAND inside the Extreme Pro Dual is relatively new if it can sustain 350MBps or so. Note that the native write rate kicks in pretty quickly at around 20GB.

A quick note: I put these drives through the wringer. Few users write the amount of data required to experience a slowdown on any sort of regular basis.

Should you buy the SanDisk Extreme Pro Dual?

If your normal write data sets are small, the convenience of the dual captive USB connectors makes the Extreme Pro Dual a good choice. Especially in light of its super-solid construction. But there are a lot of options out there. Shop wisely.

How we test

Drive tests currently utilize Windows 11 24H2, 64-bit running off of a PCIe 4.0 Samsung 990 Pro in an Asus Z890-Creator WiFi (PCIe 4.0/5.0) motherboard. The CPU is a Core Ultra i5 225 feeding/fed by two Crucial 64GB DDR5 5600MHz modules (128GB of memory total).

Both 20Gbps USB and Thunderbolt 5 are integrated into the motherboard and Intel CPU/GPU graphics are used. Internal PCIe 5.0 SSDs involved in testing are mounted in an Asus Hyper M.2 x16 Gen5 adapter card sitting in a PCIe 5.0 slot.

We run the CrystalDiskMark 8.04 (and 9), AS SSD 2, and ATTO 4 synthetic benchmarks (to keep article length down, we report only the former) to find the storage device’s potential performance. Then we run a series of 48GB transfer and 450GB write tests using Windows Explorer drag and drop to show what users will see during routine copy operations, as well as the far faster FastCopy run as administrator to show what’s possible.

A 25GBps two-SSD RAID 0 array on the aforementioned Asus Hyper M.2 x16 Gen5 is used as the second drive in our transfer tests. Formerly the 48GB tests were done with a RAM disk serving that purpose.

Each test is performed on a NTFS-formatted and newly TRIM’d drive so the results are optimal. Note that in normal use, as a drive fills up, performance may decrease due to less NAND for secondary caching, as well as other factors. This issue has abated somewhat with the current crop of SSDs utilizing more mature controllers and far faster, late-generation NAND.

Our testing MO constantly evolves and these results may not match those from previous articles. Only comparisons inside the article are 100% valid as those are gathered using the current hardware and MO.

Best Prices Today: SanDisk Extreme Pro Dual flash drive