GEAR OF THE YEAR

THE BEST STORAGE

BEST PORTABLE STORAGE (PREMIUM) SAMSUNG PORTABLE SSD T5 From $129 | samsung.com/au

Samsung’s been the one to beat in portable flash-based storage for some time now and despite not updating the T5 this year, the incremental price drops have kept it ahead of any new competition. You can actually get faster read and write speeds form the company’s new X5 portable SSD, but when it starts at $550 for 500GB, it’s a bit to pricey to appeal to everyone. The T5’s 437/444 Mbps read and write speeds will be good enough for most.

BEST TWO-BAY NAS BOX SYNOLOGY DS218J $270 | synology.com

The J series of drives from Synology denote that they’re more affordable products — which for us, is exactly what you want in a two-bay NAS. It still supports mammoth hard drives up to 14TB (for a total of 28TB), meaning you can still cram heaps of files and backups on board, although its CPU and RAM combination (a dual-core Marvell chip with 512GB of memory) does limit its transcoding capabilities and it can’t run virtual machines.

BEST PORTABLE STORAGE (BUDGET) WD MY PASSPORT $89 | wdc.com

If you can live with the read and write speeds of hard drives then portable storage has never been cheaper. WD’s My Passport range are good all rounders, balancing price, size and capacity and while you can still find elemental drives for a similar price or less, WD’s My Passport range come with security and backup software bundled in. Sustained read and write speeds of 114.5/ 110.1 Mbps, mean it isn’t the fastest, but it’s more than serviceable for most.

BEST FOUR-BAY NAS BOX SYNOLOGY DS918+ $760 | synology.com

The successor to the four-bay NAS we’ve recommended for the last two year (the excellent DS916+), this newer model still includes fast internals including a quad-core Celeron J3455 CPU and 4GB of RAM, making it a great choice for more demanding users – like those who want to run a Plex media server and transcode videos for playback on multiple devices around the house (or even over the internet, if you’ve got a fast NBN connection). If you need extreme storage performance, it also supports M.2 NVMe SSDs, with two dedicated slots.

BEST WIRELESS PORTABLE STORAGE WD MY PASSPORT WIRELESS SSD From $229 | wdc.com

WD’s wireless portable hard drive range has been pitched at hobbyist and professional photographers and cinematographers for some time now and so the new My Passport Wireless SSD seems like the natural progression in this range. Starting at $429 for 250GB, it costs a bomb, but if you have fast cards for your camera and a genuine need to move a lot of pictures around the the speed of an SSD justifies the price.

BEST FIVE-BAY (OR BIGGER) NAS BOX SYNOLOGY DS1618+ $1,100 | synology.com

Synology swept the board for this year’s NAS recommendations – and that’s largely because of their excellent DSM operating system, which lets you install a wide range of extra apps and services to customise your device to meet your exact needs. If you need a NAS with epic storage capabilities, this six-bay unit is our top pick, with support for 14TB hard drives (for a total of 84TB) and powered by a speedy quad-core 2.1GHz Atom C3538 processor combined with 4GB of RAM. There’s even three USB ports for hooking up external hard drives, and a PCIe slot to install faster Ethernet in future.

BEST INTERNAL SSD (PREMIUM) SAMSUNG 970 PRO (1TB, NVME) $625 | samsung.com/au

You can still have the performance and endurance benefits of MLC flash, and it comes at only half the price of the Intel Optane 905P. The Samsung 970 Pro is still an expensive option, but it is also the last consumer NVMe SSD that comes armed with durable MLC flash for enhanced performance consistency.

BEST INTERNAL NAS HARD DRIVES SEAGATE IRONWOLF From $100 | seagate.com

It’s a little unfortunate that the Seagate IronWolf NAS drives come at a premium, but they aren’t priced much more expensively than a standard hard drive at their capacity. However, their native NAS optimization makes that cost totally worth it. These drives are capable of running at a fast 7,200rpm spin rate 24/7 without having to worry about drive failure. Really, if you have one of the best NAS devices for your business or home, the Seagate IronWolf NAS really is your best bet.

BEST INTERNAL SSD (MIDRANGE) ADATA XPG SX8200 (480GB, NVME) $189 | adata.com

For its price point, the 480GB Adata XPG SX8200 is impressively fast during normal applications and game loading. The SX8200 carries the same RRP as similar SSDs, but it has a larger SLC buffer to absorb more write data at one time. The dynamic buffer maintains higher sequential write performance for longer, but this isn’t a workstation SSD. Adata is known for updating its firmware as the SSD matures, which improves the great performance even more.

BEST EXTERNAL DESKTOP STORAGE (PREMIUM) WD MY BOOK DUO 20TB $999 | wdc.com

Storage space is cheap enough these days that even if you need a tonne of it, you might as well buy that little bit more and run an external hard drive in a RAID 0 format to double the speed at which they can read and write. Demonstrating this is WD’s My Book Duo which comes preformatted to be twice as fast as conventional HDDs out of the box. With units available up to the 20TB mark, they’re not gonna be short on space.

BEST INTERNAL SSD (BUDGET) SAMSUNG 860 EVO (256GB, SATA) $75 | samsung.com/au

At less than $100, it is difficult to overlook the 250GB Samsung 860 EVO. It delivers excellent performance and offers class-leading endurance for the mainstream SATA SSD market. Samsung’s software package adds to the value and even features a DRAM caching option that increases performance in frequently used applications.

BEST EXTERNAL DESKTOP STORAGE (BUDGET) SEAGATE BACKUP PLUS HUB 4TB $169 | seagate.com

The front-facing dual USB 3.0 ports on this desktop drive are the distinguishing feature, allowing easily accessible charging or quick backup connections, but the Backup Plus Hub also excels in many other ways. Read and write speeds are 198/ 188MB per second respectively which makes it much faster than average external HDDs and it looks much sleeker than the alternatives. The best feature these days however is the price, 4TB for $169 make it unbeatable in terms of value.