TEKQ Rapide Thunderbolt 3 External SSD Review

Flash-based external direct-attached storage (DAS) devices have evolved rapidly over the last few years. Starting with simple thumb drives that could barely saturate USB 2.0 bandwidth, we now have high-performance external SSDs that take advantage of the USB 3.1 Gen 2 interface to saturate the internal SATA bandwidth. Thunderbolt 3 drives up the available bandwidth by a factor of four, and SATA has now been replaced in the high-end by NVMe / PCIe. At CES 2018, we saw plans from multiple manufacturers to introduce mainstream external storage drives using NVMe SSDs with a Thunderbolt 3 interface. Today, we review one such device – the Rapide Thunderbolt 3 SSD from TEKQ.