CalDigit Tuff Nano Plus 2TB - Compact Rugged IP67 USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 10Gb/s External NVME SSD, Compatible with Thunderbolt 4 Mac and PC, Up to 1055MB/s (2TB Nano Plus, Royal Blue)

This drive was purchased to run on both macOS 11.x and Windows 10, running through a variety of synthetic benchmarks and real-world tests like Adobe Premiere footage / previews drive, and others. While the design is solid and I dont have doubts about its rugged aspects, the performance of this drive is dissappointing. For starters it doesnt get anywhere close to 10Gbps as a top read/write speeds. When brand new it consistently performed around 700 MB/s write (instead of ~ 1200) and 900 MB/s read. These are not bad by any means and certainly better than older USB drives, but not to the level expected based on whats advertised. Worse was after a few weeks use the drive started exhibiting very choppy write speeds where even with simple benchmarks the speeds randomly spike between really low numbers like 200 MB/s and somewhat higher around 500 MB/s. Drive has been tested with diagnostic utilities and shows as OK, and reformatted in different ways, but the issue persists. My opinion is that this drive will not reach the speeds most people will expect and will not hold up under heavy use very well. For occasional backups or office use its probably fine.

Working beyond my expectations on this product.

Fast Fast I have it working with my Mac and work wintel usb c can’t be beat very nice nano storage

This is a review of the Caldigit Tuff Nano with a brand new 16 Macbook Pro with a thunderbolt 3 40Gbps 100 watt 17 inch OWC cable plugged directly into the T3 port on the MBP it tests at 700MB/s write and 904 MB/s read using the blackmagic design disk speed test. So beware any time you see a speed that says up to. Still its fast for the money, and small, and Ill probably buy another for field work. Small is good with the size of my kit, small and faster is a win win. Go out and buy it. Works right out of the box with Mac. Mac OS Extended (Journaled). The second photo is up against a SSD enclosure so you can see how small it is. You can buy the 2400MB/sec-2800MB/s 4x NVMe RAID 0 array drives out there but they will be much bigger. OK, I just switched the T3 cable to the one that came in the box with the drive and the speeds are a little faster, 776MB/s and 908MB/s. Interesting. Use the cable in the box, too many inferior T3 cables out there. Update: I can confirm this does work with the 2020 iPad Pro 11 inch. I tried the Sabrent NvME but the ipad would not recognize it, iPad does not support thunderbolt 3. So far the tough nano is the fastest small portable drive that works with the iPad. I dont even need a hub because I plug in an SD card reader, the SanDisk UHS-II and I can capture a 2 GB video file (300MB/s sandisk card) in 7 seconds. BTW, the SanDisk SD to USB-C card reader is the fastest out there in my tests So get it. I dont see any need for a Gnarbox box anymore. I capture from the SD card onto my iPad Pro because I have a 1 TB of storage. I can dump from the iPad back to the Caldigit tuff nano if I need to. But that process is slow, if you wanna dump 230 GB from the iPad to the Caldigit tuff nano it will take about three hours. Not sure why the process is so slow going out from the iPad. But I still have the originals on the cards and a copy on my iPad, thats good enough for me. Im liking this tuff nano more and more especially as the prices drop.

First impression was good, it looks like its a good quality product. Started using it and it keeps getting hotter and hotter. Speed went down considerably and im afraid of using it for backup and it ends up failing because of the amount of heat it generates. For the price i thought about giving it a try instead of spending the extra for a samsung t5. oh well ill be returning it and getting a t5 instead, its not worth the money.

This drive is fast and durable. I use it for screening uncompressed video files on Mac and PC. I’ve never had a problem with speed or dependability.

I have several CalDigit products, and recently purchased two Nano Tuff 500GB SSD drives over Amazon. One was purchased on July 10, 2020, and an earlier one on October 30, 2019 when they were first released. They are used to back up data every two or three weeks. No more than that. In the last month or so, this drives’ write has dropped down to lower than 75 MB/s. I used BM and and AJA System tests to gauge speed. The other drives write speeds, purchased in October 10, 2019, is a little better at about 400 MB/s. I am using them on a newer MacBook Pro 16”. I wiped and reformatted both of the drives, but that did not correct the significantly decreased read/write speeds. This is clearly unacceptable. Original write speeds were in the 800 MB/s range, and with very limited use and a reformat, the one drive reviewed here has diminished nearly 90%

Good device, but sent the wrong color

I bought this for the SSD inside! Opened it up, removed the SSD, and installed it in a Surface Laptop 3. $200 vs $800 that Microsoft charges for a 1TB. This drive was exactly what I needed.

The SSD in this drive is compatible with the Surface Laptop 3. You will have to destroy the case to get inside. But once you do, removing the SSD is easy. Its held to the main board by only one screw.