Lexar Go SSD with Hub review: Tiny, rugged storage for your phone

Best Prices Today: Lexar Go portable SSD/Hub

When I first opened the attractive case housing the Lexar Go with Hub my overriding thought was, “Where the heck is it?” Both the Go storage module and hub are so tiny, that tucked away in the side pocket they almost disappear.

Once discovered, I marveled at both the diminutive dimensions and the clever design. Up to 2TB of 10Gbps portable storage with extra Type-C ports that marries nicely to your phone. What’s not to like?

What are the Lexar Go’s features?

The Go SSD is tiny indeed, measuring around 1.75-inches long, an inch wide, and 0.35-inches thick. It’s also extraordinarily light at less than half an ounce. Throw in an IP65 rating and you have a nice ruggedized storage add-on that doesn’t make your phone an ungainly monster.

The SSD with Hub ships with small male/female (SSD only) and male/male (hub and SSD) Type-C hook connectors that lets you attach the SSD and/or hub so that they rest flat against that back of the phone. How flat depends on the thickness of your phone, but it was certainly close enough on my Motorola 5 Edge.

Alas, my older iPhone 11 (don’t write me about this) sports a Lightning connector, but it seems as if it would fit nicely to Type-C models. You can also plug the SSD by its lonesome into the phone’s Type-C port if you don’t mind the extra length.

The three port hub (the larger unit above), which marries nicely to the SSD (below) isn’t much larger at 1.75-inches square and the same 0.35-inches thick. It adds a mere 0.8 ounces to the mix, making the combined weight 1.2 ounces.

The final piece in the kit is a screw-on tripod adapter (arching over everything in the image above) with its own Type-C connector for the phone and a captive Type-C cable that you can run to the hub (or male/female adapter and SSD).

Note that I found the male Type-C connector on the Go SSD a tighter fit than normal. Indeed, it was a bit of a pain marrying it solo to the back of PCWorld’s test rig. The advantage to the tight fit is that the Go SSD won’t fall off your phone at an inopportune moment. A more than fair trade-off.

The whole deal (all the components) ships wrapped in a soft 6-inch by 4.5-inch case (shown above), which as I mentioned, is large enough that you’ll look inside and wonder where the heck everything is. Again, all the components are in side pockets, wrapped in protective coverings.

You might be tempted to buy the Lexar Go SSD on its own, simply for its tiny size. Feel free, however, the orientation of the Go SSD’s body means that the entire unit sits flush which may block other ports. It did on the back of PCWorld’s test bed.

How much is the Lexar Go?

I said up top that this is a pricey unit. Sans the hub, the 2TB Go SSD with Hub that I tested was $320 on Amazon at the time I started writing, but was back up to its $349 retail price in short order. The drive itself is $300. In the grand scheme of 10Gbps USB SSDs, that’s nearly twice what you pay for something of the same capacity hanging off a USB cable.

There’s also a 1TB version of the Go SSD with Hub available for $240 ($190 solo). Again, about twice what a generic 10Gbps USB SSD will set you back.

So you’re ponying up a rather hefty premium for the uber-svelte form factor, and what I consider outstanding convenience. Whether you find those things worth the extra moola, only you will know. I suspect many mobile content creators will.

How fast is the Lexar Go?

The Lexar Go performed largely on par for a 10Gbs USB 3.2 SSD when you weigh both the synthetic benchmark and real-world results. That said, its CrystalDiskMark 8 sequential transfer numbers suffered distinctly compared to the SK Hynix Tube T31. Note that the Tube T31 is significantly larger than the Go.

The Lexar Go couldn’t keep up with the SK Hynix Tube T31 in CrystalDiskMark 8’s 4K tests either, though it’s still no slouch. Given the small amount of surface area, thermals might come into play — proactively or during long writes.

On the other hand, the Lexar Go proved aces in our 48GB transfers, beating out the arch-rival SK Hynix Tube T31 by 40 seconds.

Despite it being a 2TB SSD, the Lexar Go slowed a bit during our 450GB write, though not tragically as did the Corsair Flash Survivor Stealth.

Normally, we don’t worry too much about power consumption, but the Go had a noticeable effect on battery life. In fact, it killed the Motorola (pictured) overnight — a run-down that normally takes several days.

That’s not a huge knock, as 2TB of NAND requires some juice and other SSDs will also drain the battery. We’re just saying that you should only attach the Go as needed.

Overall, the Lexar Go performance easily exceeds what you’ll need for high-resolution video recording — the most taxing storage operation your phone can perform.

Should you buy the Lexar Go with Hub?

The Go SSD is an extremely handy, low-profile way to expand your phone’s storage. It’s on the pricey side, but if you have the need, it will fill it. As the hub is a minor expense, grab it as well.

How we test

Drive tests currently utilize Windows 11, 64-bit running on an X790 (PCIe 4.0/5.0) motherboard/i5-12400 CPU combo with two Kingston Fury 32GB DDR5 4800MHz modules (64GB of memory total). Both 20Gbps USB and Thunderbolt 4 are integrated to the back panel and Intel CPU/GPU graphics are used. The 48GB transfer tests utilize an ImDisk RAM disk taking up 58GB of the 64GB of total memory. The 450GB file is transferred from a 2TB Samsung 990 Pro which also runs the OS.

Each test is performed on a newly NTFS-formatted and TRIM’d drive so the results are optimal. Note that in normal use, as a drive fills up, performance may decrease due to less NAND for secondary caching, as well as other factors. This can be less of a factor with the current crop of SSDs with far faster late-generation NAND.

Caveat: The performance numbers shown apply only to the drive we were shipped and to the capacity tested. SSD performance can and will vary by capacity due to more or fewer chips to shotgun reads/writes across and the amount of NAND available for secondary caching. Vendors also occasionally swap components. If you ever notice a large discrepancy between the performance you experience and that which we report, by all means, let us know.