Samsung Portable SSD P9 hits 4,000 MB/s at a $649 price

By Rebecca Stone

At $649.99 for 2TB, Samsung’s Portable SSD P9 delivers a rated 4,000 MB/s sequential read and 3,800 MB/s write, putting a premium on both bandwidth and storage capacity.

Tom’s Hardware was blunt: “If you’re after fast external storage, you’re going to have to pay a lot for it these days.” It called the P9 “the best USB4 drive we’ve tested to date.”

The review linked all-time-high demand for flash and RAM to AI hyperscalers, making this a difficult launch market. Samsung’s first USB4 external drive targets content creators, videographers and media collectors who need faster, roomier storage for production work.

What does the P9 bring to the market?

Samsung offers 1TB, 2TB, 4TB and 8TB; only the 2TB model was in stock when reviewed.

• 1TB: $339.99; up to 4,000 MB/s read and 3,700 MB/s write.
• 2TB: $649.99; up to 4,000 MB/s read and 3,800 MB/s write.
• 4TB: $1,439.99; up to 4,000 MB/s read and 3,800 MB/s write.
• 8TB: $2,879.99; up to 4,000 MB/s read and 3,800 MB/s write.

All models use USB4 Gen 3x2 at 40Gbps, measure 3.5 x 2.6 x 0.3 inches, weigh 0.21 pounds and carry a five-year warranty.

Samsung swaps the T9’s textured rubber coating for a rigid metal shell and adds a rubber-coated base to keep the drive from sliding on a desk. The P9 is 0.3 inches thick versus the T9’s 0.55 inches; the T9’s 20Gbps interface has roughly half the bandwidth.

Samsung lists no IP rating for dust or wind resistance, and the reviewer disliked the visible base seam. Even so, they expected the rigid enclosure to survive beyond its 2-meter drop rating.

The only accessory is a 16-inch braided USB-C cable with two hook-and-loop fasteners for managing excess length. The reviewer called it one of the best-feeling braided cables in their USB collection and praised its usefulness on a desktop.

A Samsung Magician Launcher link on the drive prompts a software download. Magician covers drive health and management, temperature and performance, diagnostics, monitoring, secure erasing and encryption, including 256-bit hardware encryption. Its mobile-app-first interface looked oversized on the reviewer’s 65-inch TV, while a compact mode hid nearly everything except the Drive Health gauge.

What drives the price?

The review said USB4 scarcity was likely due to flash availability; many drives launched the prior year had become hard to find.

• SanDisk Extreme Pro USB4: $549 at 2TB, $100 less than the P9; $340 less at 4TB, where the P9 was out of stock.
• LaCie Rugged SSD4: launched a little over a year ago and performed well on Windows and Macs, but many retailers listed it sold out or unavailable. The 2TB model cost $750-$800 at Micro Center and two online outlets.
• Corsair EX400U: the magnetic-backed review favorite launched at $119 for 1TB in early 2025. Its 2TB price reached $692, and availability was shrinking.
• LaCie TB5: the Thunderbolt 5 drive used in testing cost $1,999 for the tested 4TB model.
• Crucial X10: the latest 20Gbps version cost $399 at 2TB, offering about half the bandwidth of USB4.

The P9’s $649.99 2TB price sits $100 above SanDisk but below Corsair and LaCie. The reviewer estimated that a launch a little more than a year earlier would have yielded roughly one-third that price, a retrospective judgment rather than an MSRP.

How fast is it in practice?

In 2025, Tom’s Hardware updated its external-storage testbed around an AMD Ryzen 7600X-based PC with an Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Hero motherboard and Lian Li Lancool 217 case, adding native USB4. Reviewers retested all charted drives on X870E except the final Iometer sustained test, and replaced the older, non-comparable CrystalDiskMark 7 with version 8.

In PCMark 10’s application traces, the P9 trailed LaCie’s TB5 and USB4 drives from LaCie and SanDisk, but beat Corsair’s EX400U. The TB5 can run faster on Apple hardware, yet performed poorly in some tests on this USB4 platform.

DiskBench copied a custom 50GB set of 4,617 images, videos and software ISOs to the test drive. After five idle minutes, it reversed the copy to a PCIe 4.0 testing drive. The P9 led writes and ranked fourth in reads. It beat Corsair and nearly matched SanDisk on writes, where SanDisk ran at less than half the P9’s rate.

In CrystalDiskMark 8’s default, best-case synthetic test, the P9 ranked first for both reads and writes. Most high-end rivals were close, though SanDisk trailed on reads by a few hundred MB/s.

External SSDs typically use a fast SLC-like write cache before falling back to native TLC or QLC flash. Samsung has not disclosed the P9’s cache size, whether it is fixed or dynamic, or whether it varies by capacity. The reviewer cautioned that the tested 2TB unit might therefore be disadvantaged against charted 4TB LaCie and Crucial drives.

Iometer’s sequential write test held the P9 near 3,750 MB/s for roughly the first minute. It then fluctuated between just below 2,200 MB/s and just above 2,400 MB/s for 12 minutes before dropping to 600-800 MB/s. Around minute 17, the P9 recovered to the 2,200-2,400 MB/s band and held it through the extended 30-minute run.

SanDisk’s Extreme Pro sustained roughly 3,500 MB/s about three times longer, then fell first to about 1,200 MB/s and then to 800 MB/s. It remained near 800 MB/s from minute 15 until the test stopped at minute 30. Corsair’s EX400U never exceeded 1,800 MB/s and frequently fell below 1,600 MB/s.

What does the premium buy?

“As much as $649 for a 2TB external SSD still feels like a lot, the Samsung P9 performed very well in our testing,” the review concluded. The P9 did not always lead, but consistently beat the pricier, scarcer EX400U.

SanDisk remains $100 cheaper at 2TB and $340 cheaper at 4TB, though it has been available longer. The P9 is about one-third smaller than SanDisk’s and more travel-friendly, while its sustained writes matter for professional workloads.

Once the P9 settles into the market, the review expects its price to move closer to SanDisk’s, while warning that both could rise under recent market trends.