SK Hynix Beetle X31 will debut on the external SSD stage in mid-2023. It uses a gold-plated aluminum chassis, a 10Gbps interface, and a maximum capacity of 1TB. Now, the company is updating its lineup with the 2TB Beetle X31 we see here. The roomier Scarab drives come with a silver casing this time around, but aside from a color change and a doubling of capacity, not much has changed – which is certainly not a bad thing.
The company offers a generous accessories package that includes USB-C and USB-A cables and a silicon bumper, which feels like it’s more useful for keeping the drive’s surface free of wear than actual protection. This drive’s aluminum casing feels as solid as any external SSD I’ve tested, except perhaps LaCie’s expensive Rugged Mini SSD.
That said, the biggest hurdle the 2TB Beetle will likely face is pricing. With an MSRP of $169, the drive faces stiff competition from other excellent 10 Gbps drives, such as Crucial X9 Pro and Silicon Power PX10currently both products have lower selling prices under the same production capacity. But I expect the Beetle’s price to be competitive in the market, like the company’s T31 tube The stick drive has, and frequent sales make it hard to ignore.
Specification
| product | 512GB | 1TB | 2TB |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | $49.99 (street) | $93.99 (street) | $169.99 (recommended) |
| Interface/Protocol | USB 3.2 Gen2 (10 Gbps) | USB 3.2 Gen2 (10 Gbps) | USB 3.2 Gen2 (10 Gbps) |
| include | USB Type-C to Type-C cable, USB Type-C to Type-A cable, protective case | USB Type-C to Type-C cable, USB Type-C to Type-A cable, protective case | USB Type-C to Type-C cable, USB Type-C to Type-A cable, protective case |
| sequential reading | 1050MB/sec | 1050MB/sec | 1050MB/sec |
| sequential write | 1000MB/sec | 1000MB/sec | 1050MB/sec |
| Endurance (TBW) | not specified | not specified | not specified |
| aspect | 2.91 x 1.81 x 0.58 inches (74 x 46 x 14.8 mm) | 2.91 x 1.81 x 0.58 inches (74 x 46 x 14.8 mm) | 2.91 x 1.81 x 0.58 inches (74 x 46 x 14.8 mm) |
| weight | 53 grams | 53 grams | 53 grams |
| Warranty | 3 years | 3 years | 3 years |
SK hynix Beetle X31 Design and Accessories
The X31 measures 2.91 x 1.81 x 0.58 inches and has a sleek silver metal exterior that feels more like a futuristic pebble than a six-legged insect. Arguably, it feels better in the hand than any portable drive I’ve tested — for what it’s worth. It’s also very portable, although competing drives from Crucial and Silicon Power are thinner.
One aspect of the Beetle X31 that really stands out is the accessories that come with it. The company provides a pair of white 10-inch USB cables, one ending in USB-C and the other in USB-A (which connects to the drive on the other end via USB-C). Also included in the box is what the company calls a protective case. In fact, it’s a transparent TPU bumper that runs around the drive, protecting its edges. It’s a nice add-on, but doesn’t feel particularly necessary as the drive’s enclosure is a very solid-feeling block of aluminum that looks and feels very premium.
Some may prefer the champagne gold on the lower capacity model, but I prefer the silver (Hynix calls it dark gray) on the 2TB model because it’s more neutral, and I have a feeling many Macbook users will find this too The color is very attractive.
The drive also has a silicon bumper on the bottom that both hides the internal access screws and prevents the SSD from sliding around on the table. Overall, I really like the design, although Crucial’s X9 and X10 drives feel equally solid and thinner.
The drive comes free with any kind of software or applications, which I think is generally good since most included storage software is usually free software or provides little tangible value.
Compare products
Has 2TB 10 Gbps load external storage Options on the market, including some best flash drive and Best external SSD. But the Beetle X31’s fiercest competition will come from several lower-priced 10 Gbps options, namely Crucial’s X9 Pro and Silicon Power PX10. The latter is 2TB capacity for only $124 As we write this review.
Both drives are also thinner than the Beetle X31, and while the PX10 is longer (housing a full-size 2280 SSD under its aluminum casing), the Crucial’s drive is a bit wider. Really, though, it’s all going to come down to performance.
Track Test – PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark
PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that measures storage performance using a broad set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks.
The Beetle X31 didn’t score very high on our tests, with a score of 1001 putting it in the bottom half of our comparison drives. But it did beat Samsung’s 10 GBps T7 Shield. Silicon Power PX10 does this better and costs less.
Transfer Rate – DiskBench
We use DiskBench storage Benchmarking Tool to test real-world file transfer performance using a custom 50 GB data set. We copied (written) 4,617 files (images, videos, and software ISO files) to a folder on the test drive. Then, after letting the system idle for five minutes, we performed the same test in reverse, moving the test folder to a different location on the PCIe 4.0 test drive.
The Beetle X31 once again failed to come close to the top spot, this time beating out only two Samsung drives. That said, when you ignore the pricier 20 GBps Crucial X10 Pro (mostly for context), its read speeds aren’t too far off the competition. In this test, its write performance was better, ranking third among other 10 Gbps hard drives.
Comprehensive test CrystalDiskMark
CrystalDiskMark (CDM) is a free and easy-to-run storage Benchmarking A tool commonly used by SSD companies to assign product performance specifications. It gives us insight into how each device handles different file sizes. We ran this test under default settings.
In this synthetic sequential test, the hynix drive looks to be the best by far, with similar read and write capabilities, the former just behind the PX10 and the latter ahead of it.
From an IOPS perspective, the Beetle X31 was a mixed bag, outperforming all but the PX10 on reads but only beating the underperforming T5 Evo on random writes. Still, its writing scores are at least respectable here. I wouldn’t recommend booting your main operating system from an SK hynix drive (or any external SSD, to be honest), but for typical storage and light programming tasks, these results are pretty good.
Sustained write performance
A drive’s rated write specs are only part of the performance picture. Most external SSDs (like their internal counterparts) implement a write cache or fast flash area programmed to perform like a faster SLC, absorbing incoming data.
When a workload saturates the cache and slips into “native” TLC or QLC flash memory, sustained write speeds often suffer greatly. We used Iometer to continuously write hammer the SSD for 15 minutes to measure the size of the write cache and the performance after cache saturation.
In the last and most demanding test, the SK hynix Beetle X31 performed reasonably well, writing at around 1040 MB/s for about 7 minutes, but then dropped to very slowly below 150 MB/s range. This means that if you are writing less than 430 GB of data, the SK hynix drive will be faster than most 10 GBps drives. However, many drives will be faster if you write far more than you write in one consecutive run.
T7 shield and Seagate In our testing, the game drive consistently clocked in at close to 100 MB/s. And the Silicon Power PX 10, although it dropped from peak performance after a minute in this test, still managed to stay above 800 MB/s for almost the entirety of our testing, making it significantly faster than the hynix drive. Meet the really demanding professional-grade tasks, like filling up an entire drive quickly.
bottom line
The SK hynix Beetle X31 isn’t faster or more expensive than the best 10 Gbps SSDs (at least its $169 MSRP), but its performance is generally pretty good, especially if you don’t do things like write very often Professional-grade tasks are transferred from fast internal drives to the entire drive at once. For file storage, running basic programs, or plugging into a supported console for game backup, its speed and responsiveness are more than adequate, and many won’t notice a difference compared to significantly faster alternatives.
Despite having faster and roomier drives, I often find myself using the Beetle X31 for day-to-day storage tasks because I like the way it looks and feels in my hand, and because the white cables (USB-A and USB-C) are in Easily identifiable among the clutter of cables on my small mountain range. As for the $169 launch price, that’s a lot when faster drives like the Silicon Power X10 cost significantly less. But I’m pretty confident we’ll see the Beetle X31 priced at a more reasonable price. After all, 1TB SK hynix tube T31 Pricing starts at $99, dropped to $84 as I wrote the review, and was recently on sale for $59 during Black Friday.
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