Inland’s Platinum External SSD seeks to put the company’s stamp on the portable drive market. This drive from Inland, Micro Center’s internal SSD brand, is another “P” model, as in Platinum, but it deviates from the company’s typical drives by being particularly portable, making it a contender for our list of the best external SSDs.

We’ve reviewed many Inland drives over the years, with varying results. The discs have common themes, however: no frills, a competitive warranty and cheaper prices. Inland often uses the same hardware as other manufacturers but offers no software. However, you can pick up their drives at a physical store – if you live near a Micro Center – which can be handy for many PC builders. This drive is geared more towards laptop or notebook computer users who need a fast and efficient way to transport data, essentially serving as a more substantial USB flash drive.

It will be interesting to see how this drive holds up against traditional portable SSDs, like the Samsung T7 Shield, as well as other in-car solutions like the Kingston XS2000.

Inland Platinum External SSD Specifications

The Inland Platinum External SSD is available in 500GB and 1TB capacities. Speeds range up to 1.1/1.0 Gbps of sequential read/write throughput, matching the 10 Gb/ s. (Micro Center’s site has the reverse, different from the Amazon listing, but reads are generally faster than writes.)

The Platinum’s price is actually quite good compared to other portable 10Gbps NVMe SSDs. However, the hardware is designed to offer a budget solution, so temper your expectations if you’re considering this product. It’s probably good for basic storage and decent for read workloads and burst write workloads, but not much else.

Inland offers a four-year warranty with this player. The drive is small and bus-powered; the first feature is a nice bonus if you really need portability. That’s especially true since Phison designed the U17 controller to be low-power, making it fun to use with laptops with limited battery power.

Software and accessories

The SSD comes with short USB Type-C to Type-C and Type-C to Type-A cables. This allows the device to be used with just about any system under the sun. Obviously, speeds will be reduced with a 5 Gbps host port. As with other Inland records, there are no frills here. Some users may obtain this drive for archival or backup purposes, requiring them to grab freeware.

To look closer

Internally, portable SSDs are normally an entry-level NVMe drive coupled to a USB interface through a separate bridge chip. However, hybrid controllers are becoming more common, such as the Phison U17 solution in this device and the SMI SM2320 we recently reviewed in the Kingston XS2000. Of course, a 20Gbps Phison variant – using the faster U18 sibling of this drive’s controller – would be better for comparing sequential performance.

This type of configuration has advantages because the design is streamlined. The drive consumes less power and may be less bulky, although it can no longer be used internally in a PC. This means that a failure will render the assembly unusable instead of simply having to replace a drive or enclosure. These solutions are, of course, also DRAM-free and may not perform as well as traditional drives. Therefore, these designs are specialized, but not a new concept as with customer BGA SSDs.

The Inland Platinum External’s case is simple, but at least it’s easy to open. The LED indicator on top flashes white to indicate I/O activity. You’re only four screws inside, which sadly means there’s no real cooling to be had. We will see later if this is a problem. Internally, the 1TB model has two NAND packages – one on each side – plus the DRAM-less Phison U17 controller. The interface is USB-C. As this controller is integrated, which means there is no separate bridge chip, so the drive is not removable.

The Phison U17 controller is a unique solution for portable SSDs. Its sibling, the U18, has a faster 20 Gbps interface. Both controllers are 2-channel, but the bus speeds are 800 MT/s and 1400 MT/s for the U17 and U18 respectively. We can imagine them as similar to SMI’s SM2320, a controller we’ve reviewed in more than one product. Phison points out that this native UFD controller is far more efficient than having a separate bridge chip. That makes sense since the latter setup also tends to come with a beefier 4-channel controller.

Looking at bus speeds, we can translate 800 MT/s to 800 MB/s per channel, although this is considerably lower after overhead (addressing, commands, etc.), especially for write traffic. Nevertheless, the two-channel design is sufficient to reach the maximum speeds limited by the USB interface with a capacity of 1 TB or less. This also applies to the U18 with its faster bus speed, which further allows for higher capacities as the flash will often operate at a lower rate. However, sustained performance could be worse for wear on a two-channel design, as we’ll test.

The flash is labeled IA7HG67AWA, which appears to be a 96-layer QLC from Micron. This flash is popular on some drives driven by Phison’s E12S and E16 controllers, and is also prominent in Intel’s 665p. Intel has since released 144-layer QLC flash with its 670p and additionally flash manufacturers are all working on their own 176-layer QLC, including Crucial/Micron who already have products on the market. Obviously this is a budget oriented device using an older flash.

Micro Center lists this drive as coming with TLC. Asking an Inland representative about the flash, they quickly confirmed my suspicion that it was QLC. This might seem like a glaring mistake, especially since QLC is best at higher capacities. However, it is a two-channel device and QLC is more than adequate at 1TB. This can be an attractive trade-off for the small size and cheaper price per GB.

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