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is a senior reporter who’s been covering and reviewing the latest gadgets and tech since 2006, but has loved all things electronic since he was a kid.
Sharge is a brand slowly making a name for itself with eye-catching accessories that solve problems you didn’t realize you had. Its latest creation is an external SSD drive that includes a built-in cooling fan to improve its performance and longevity. It also has a bunch of extra ports so you can connect other accessories to your laptop or smartphone while moving data around. The Sharge Disk Pro just launched on Kickstarter and comes in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities temporarily discounted to $189, $289, and $469, respectively.
As the performance of SSDs has increased, so has their propensity to heat up while in use. Excess heat can affect an SSD’s reliability and lifespan, so their performance is reduced when they reach a certain temperature (often over 70 degrees Celsius). It’s especially a problem for external SSDs housed in slim cases with no airflow, but the Disk Pro’s fan solves that. It can be set to a Turbo Mode that continually runs at 10,000rpm to keep the drive’s operating temperature at around 50 degrees Celsius, or a quieter Auto Mode that adjusts the fan speed automatically up to 7,000rpm as cooling is needed, and turns it off completely below 25 degrees Celsius.
Sharge says the Disk Pro features read and write speeds of up to 10Gbps and can be magnetically attached to the back of smartphones or consoles. In addition to a built-in USB-C cable it has an HDMI port capable of 4K/144Hz and 8K/30Hz video output plus an extra USB-C and USB-A port that can deliver a total power output of 80W to connected devices. When you only need the hub functionality, a switch lets you disable the SSD entirely to help prolong its life.
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