Review: the Glyph Atom is one of the fastest SSDs out there
By Adam Noyes
What makes Glyph different
Glyph utilizes RAID-0. This is known as striping RAID. What happens is that instead of writing to just one drive at 480MBps, it writes to two drives simultaneously. Ostensibly doubling the read and write speed of the drive.
The exterior of the drive is also really nice. It has a smooth anodized aluminum finish that while not just matching the MacBooks, is a great heatsink. It also comes in a silicone sleeve. The sleeve is removable if your Glyph would prefer not to adorn it. I really love when companies pay attention to the details, and Glyph does that because if you do take of the silicone cover, underneath are two silicone feet on the bottom to still prevent it from sliding on your desk. I really like that aspect. Though when you are on the go, the cover is best left in place as to not scratch the drive, or any of your other metal gadgets.
Performance
While other SSDs like the Samsung T5 can write at 450MBps, the Glyph is capable of writing all the way up to 860MBps, in theory. That is nearly double the performance! Real world usage is going to be a lot slower, right? Well, after several run throughs of the Black Magic Disk Speedtest, I was regularly getting between 700 to nearly 900 MBps. Those are some fantastic numbers to be seeing on a portable drive.
I/O
The Glyph works great with the new MacBook Pro because it is fully capable of using USB-C and Thunderbolt 3. In the box, it comes with a USB-C cable, as well as a USB-C to USB-A for older machines that don’t fully support the USB-C standard.
That single USB-C port is the only port on the drive, so you don’t have to worry about any additional power, or other cords to look for.
The bottom line
When I say I’ve tried dozens on dozens of drives, I mean it. I have network drives, desktop drives, build-your-own RAID solutions, etc. I always look for redundancies and ways to protect my data.
Glyph has outperformed nearly all my other drives. It is fast, functional, and looks great. I’m not saying that the Glyph is the only drive out there that supports two, RAID-0 SSDs in a super tiny USB-C enclosure, but I’m saying that its competition is limited…….
Click here to read the full article on IDownloadBlog