Sharge, the corporate that makes pleasant retro Mac-shaped chargers and see-inside batteries, is lastly impressing me with a conveyable SSD. I couldn’t suggest the Sharge Disk, Disk Plus, and even the Disk Professional, however I’d be pleased to personal the brand new Disk Professional 2 Extremely.
This isn’t only a drive. It’s a 4K HDMI dock and a USB-C hub too. It’s a veritable USB-C Swiss Military Knife for all of your principal devices: laptop computer, pill, cellphone, Steam Deck, even the Nintendo Swap and Swap 2.
And this USB multitool has built-in MagSafe sample magnets to stay it to your iPhone, Pixel, or something the place you’re keen to stay a magnetic ring. (One stick-on ring is included.)
In whole, this pack-of-playing-cards-sized gadget provides one 4K 144Hz HDMI 2.1 video output, a 5Gbps USB-A port, SD and microSD card readers, plus USB-C passthrough charging — plus a slot so as to add as much as 8TB of solid-state storage with a full-sized M.2 2280 (or smaller M.2 2242 and 2230) stick SSDs.
By plugging in a single wire, I gave my MacBook Professional a second exterior monitor, 4 simultaneous sources of storage (SSD, USB flash drive, SD, microSD), and 80W of USB-C PD juice.
And after I plugged in my Android cellphone and a USB-C iPhone, each of them noticed the SSD and confirmed up on my HDMI display screen. It additionally unlocked 4K60 ProRes video recording on the iPhone… extra on that in a minute.
A few of these options exist collectively in different devices, and this 10Gbps exterior SSD enclosure actually isn’t the quickest on the town now that 40Gbps and 80Gbps enclosures exist. With huge 100GB and 195GB transfers, my write speeds with a finances 1TB Lexar NM710 within the Disk Professional 2 averaged round 700MB/s.
However that’s nonetheless nothing to sneeze at, and what number of enclosures double as USB-C HDMI docks, not to mention ones that talk Nintendo’s language and magnetically connect to your cellphone? What number of have a built-in fan to maintain them cool? And what number of are low-power sufficient which you can energy the HDMI and USB ports out of your cellphone or laptop computer, no want for an influence wire?
Issues get a bit of tough with the low wattage, although.
First, Sharge is promoting two fashions of the Disk Professional 2, the “Extremely” that requires at the least 1.5W of USB-C bus energy, and and the “Lite” which wants 5W for its extra power-hungry chips (and solely does 4K60 over HDMI 2.0, as an alternative of 4K144 over HDMI 2.1).
Second, to attain such low energy draw on the Extremely, it could actually solely route 3W of energy out of your laptop computer or cellphone to a linked SSD, Sharge advertising supervisor Leo H. tells me. Opinions present my borrowed Lexar NM710 attracts greater than that in writes — and certain sufficient, the Disk Professional 2 shut down proper after I began ProRes video recording on an iPhone 15 Professional or an enormous switch on my Galaxy S25.
(There’s a easy resolution: simply plug an exterior USB-C battery or charger into the Disk Professional 2. Once I did that, I recorded over 5 minutes of 4K60 ProRes video, no drawback. You can as an alternative attempt to discover a lower-power SSD.)
Third, whereas the HDMI dock does work with each my Swap 2 and my unique Swap, Nintendo’s handhelds explicitly verify for a comparatively particular exterior energy supply earlier than docking. Sharge remains to be tweaking the firmware, however says I at the moment want a 85W or greater USB-C PD charger plugged in for Swap 2 particularly.
You must also know there’s an extended pause earlier than the Nintendo Swap and Swap 2 seem on a linked TV, like another third-party docks, and also you received’t get variable refresh price (VRR) with a Steam Deck or different PC handhelds. It does 4K144 and 4K120 with HDR, however the Steam Deck claims my VRR TV just isn’t VRR-capable with the Disk Professional 2 as a go-between.
And whereas I efficiently labored with a mouse, keyboard, headset, monitor, webcam, and extra plugged into the Disk Professional 2 for a number of days — by daisy-chaining an additional USB hub — I did often see the monitor go darkish for a minute, roughly as soon as a day.
There’s nonetheless work for Sharge to do. But it surely’s the primary drive from the corporate that I’d fortunately add to my go bag.
The unique Sharge Disk was a cumbersome dongle with a ridiculously noisy tiny fan. The Disk Plus marketed itself as barely-there stylishly skinny SSD enclosure that magnetically attaches to your cellphone, however the magnets have been really a stick-on accent that made the drive a lot thicker. The primary Sharge Disk Professional had an influence port so tiny and recessed that the majority charging cables wouldn’t match, and buttons that would really minimize energy to the drive mid-transfer.
The Disk Professional 2 fixes all that. The included cable is now removable, the magnets are built-in, the ports are now not weirdly recessed, the fan isn’t noisy by default, you’ll be able to flip off that fan completely, the swap doesn’t minimize energy to the drive, and the drive has a bigger airflow path. Plus, you’ll be able to carry your individual SSD — although I’d want toolless swaps to the present screws.
You received’t all the time see a lot greater switch speeds turning that fan on full blast. My 195GB switch took 4 minutes and 55 seconds with the fan on full energy, and 5 minutes 5 seconds with it off — a distinction of simply 10 seconds, although I let it cool between assessments. The actual distinction is the one I felt when attempting to select up the Disk Professional 2 afterwards. With out fan, the metallic sides have been burning scorching to the contact.
The Disk Professional 2 Extremely is $75 on Kickstarter for early chook and will likely be $89 full retail. Whereas the standard caveats apply with Kickstarter tasks, Sharge has a really stable monitor document for transport (even when it’s hit or miss on design).
