WD My Passport SSD review: 7 years in, super-lightweight SSD is still class

Western Digital (WD) has long been a trusted name in the world of portable storage solutions. Most people reading this review will likely have once owned at least one device made by WD, either stuffed full of school or university work, crammed with backups of photos of loved ones or simply acting as an extension to your internal hard drive to store music, films and other documents.

For decades now, there’s no denying the attraction of an external hard drive to extend your storage capability. Western Digital has been at the forefront of this, largely thanks to their reliability, durability and portable designs that have become a byword for safe, reliable and fuss-free storage extension. In this review, we’ll be taking a look at the new WD My Passport SSD, an updated incarnation of their original portable SSD many of us are still using that was released back in 2017, and still sets the benchmark for among the best out there.

WD My Passport SSD review: Key specifications

Design

Indeed, travelling with the WD My Passport SSD is a stress-free experience as the device is also shock-resistant and resistant to vibration. WD also state that it’s ‘drop resistant’ up to 6.5ft (1.98m) too. The SSD is compatible out the box and easy to get going with – we were pleased to see that natively it features USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 connectivity but it also ships with a standard USB-A adaptor, so people operating older devices won’t be left out. One thing of note is that the cable is only a couple of inches long. It could have been double the size and still be small, providing a lot more flexibility for a wider range of users.

It may come as a surprise initially quite how small the box that the My Passport SSD ships in. The first thing that strikes you is not only how small and thin the device is, but how little it weighs. At a tad over 45 grams, it’s as light as some of the higher-capacity USB sticks out there.

The drive itself is a metal enclosure and WD offer a choice of five attractive colours that benefit from a raised, ridge design akin to a rough pebble that not only looks the part but actually has a couple of ergonomic benefits. It’s easy to grip when in use and perhaps more importantly, because of the ridges on the side, easy to identify at the bottom of your kit bag when you’re rummaging around for it.

Functionality

It’s also worth noting that WD offers a 5-year limited warranty and a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you’re relatively well safeguarded against failure, too.

In terms of using the device, there’s very little that will come as a surprise to most people, simply plug the My Passport in and use it in the way you would any other external hard drive or storage solution. The device comes ready to go for both PC and Mac, so you won’t have any formatting concerns there.

WD offers its software and security features with the My Passport SSD, which comes equipped with WD Security software through the WD Discovery app, allowing users to set up password protection, hardware encryption and backup to safeguard sensitive data. The backup allows you to add files to the hard drive at the same time as backing up to a cloud storage system, and the 256-AES hardware encryption works well, too.

This added layer of security is particularly valuable for those who frequently work with confidential information or store personal files on the drive, and WD Backup allows you to schedule automatic backups of important folders which is a nice touch.

Performance

Down to the nitty-gritty of the performance of the SSD then, and this is one area WD is keen to make a big deal of, as the claimed read and write speeds of the latest NVMe technology are impressive. As we anticipate many people using the SSD will be creative professionals and content creators, we used the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test Mac utility to measure performance to assess how it stacked up against some of the larger video file formats out there.

WD claim that sequential read and write speeds clock in at up to 1050MB/s and 1000MB/s respectively – we tested this in the Disk Speed Test app simulating a 5GB file transfer. Peak performance was indeed 1050MB/s on both read and write for a brief moment, but we found that on average for larger files we were getting normal results of around 750MB/s to 850MB/s, which is a little slower than claimed and perhaps a bit disappointing on initial reading, but still means according to Blackmagic you’d be able to use the drive for everything except 8K ProRes 422 HQ footage and 12K footage, which most of us casual content creators won’t need. The device does get quite hot when being used intensively, perhaps surprisingly so, but the heat is designed to quickly dissipate out of the metal casing. Largely pleasing results.

The device works natively with the iPhone 15 – WD’s cousin company SanDisk also offers this functionality with the Extreme Portable SSD. It means you can plug the hard drive into the phone for direct file transfer using the default Files app – great for content creators who use their portable devices for the majority of their work.

Should I buy the WD My Passport SSD?

The new WD My Passport SSD is a very worthwhile upgrade from the original version and we especially liked the lightweight, sleek, colourful design. It also performs well, despite getting a little warm when in use and having a slightly too short a cable, which was our only slight niggle. The 1TB option we tested comes in at just over £100, which is a lot less than its nearest rival, the SanDisk Extreme Pro. However, with the latter, you do pick up a sturdy weather resistance, so may be better suited to life out on the road. There is also the WD Elements SE SSD, but that is larger and offers much less in terms of read/write speed. Overall, this is a great little product and highly recommended.