GoKawiilis a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.
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Sharge, the company that makes delightful retro Mac-shaped chargers and see-inside batteries, is finally impressing me with a portable SSD. I couldn’t recommend the Sharge Disk, Disk Plus, or even the Disk Pro, but I’d be happy to own the new Disk Pro 2 Ultra.
This isn’t just a drive. It’s a 4K HDMI dock and a USB-C hub too. It’s a veritable USB-C Swiss Army Knife for all your main gadgets: laptop, tablet, phone, Steam Deck, even the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2.
And this USB multitool has built-in MagSafe pattern magnets to stick it to your iPhone, Pixel, or anything where you’re willing to stick a magnetic ring. (One stick-on ring is included.)
In total, this pack-of-playing-cards-sized gadget adds one 4K 144Hz HDMI 2.1 video output, a 5Gbps USB-A port, SD and microSD card readers, plus USB-C passthrough charging — plus a slot to add up to 8TB of solid-state storage with a full-sized M.2 2280 (or smaller M.2 2242 and 2230) stick SSDs.
By plugging in a single cord, I gave my MacBook Pro a second external monitor, four simultaneous sources of storage (SSD, USB flash drive, SD, microSD), and 80W of USB-C PD juice.
And when I plugged in my Android phone and a USB-C iPhone, both of them saw the SSD and showed up on my HDMI screen. It also unlocked 4K60 ProRes video recording on the iPhone… more on that in a minute.
Some of these features exist together in other gadgets, and this 10Gbps external SSD enclosure certainly isn’t the fastest in town now that 40Gbps and 80Gbps enclosures exist. With big 100GB and 195GB transfers, my write speeds with a budget 1TB Lexar NM710 in the Disk Pro 2 averaged around 700MB/s.
I stuck a magnetic ring to my MacBook so I could hang the Disk Pro 2 on the back of its lid. Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge
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