Tropic Colour SSD - Claiming to be the WORLD’S FASTEST SSD… Thoughts?

trixareforkids770 · May 14, 2023

Hi all! A small company in the Video Production industry is launching what they’re advertising to be the “world’s fastest SSD”. Many people are skeptical and I would love to know your thoughts. Is this a legitimate product or just “smoke”?

Product page: https://tropiccolour.com/pages/osp-space-shuttle-ssd

The company is “Tropic Colour”, which is backed by an entrepreneur named Jakob Owens. He owns a few other companies, all based around providing video production resources, and has somewhat of a polarizing reputation. These companies all rely on a very strong social media presence, and are making some very shocking claims on this new product. They’re giving it a fancy packaging and creating a bunch of hype around a product that doesn’t provide much in technical specifications.

Tropic Colour have been very vocal on their Instagram marketing regarding this new SSD, and have been accused by many of just selling a NVMe SSD in a custom enclosure.

Here are a few of their Instagram posts:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CrCUEjXgvR8/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CryN3XvJWtu/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CsJ5XGcgVXJ/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

porina · May 14, 2023

They don't say it is the fastest SSD, but the fastest PORTABLE SSD. I don't know if that's true or not. The sequential specs are comparable to a 3.0 drive, and a bit short of the interface limit of Thunderbolt 3 used.

Edit: I just grabbed a Samsung PM951 as my only spare NVMe SSD. It's basically their OEM equivalent to a 950 Evo which is rated at 2.5GB/s read, 1.5GB/s writes, so far from the fastest even in the 3.0 era. Anyway, I slapped it into a Sabrent USB enclosure and benchmarked sequential speeds. Roughly 850MB/s reads, 300MB/s writes. Maybe that's where Thunderbolt interface earns its money, and also they have a fast enough controller to drive it. There are Thunderbolt NVMe enclosures which may get comparable speeds to this product.