Today we are taking a look at a unique portable SSD by the Chinese manufacturer Exascend. The Exascend Gecko external SSD announced back in 2023 is the first SSD to arrive with a quick-release built-in to connect to camera cages and other accessories.
Background
We have tested a range of SSDs over the years supporting different connections from USB to Thunderbolt and in today’s competitive market standing out from the crowd is difficult mostly since actual performance is dependent more on the user’s machine and connection.
Exascend has been developing storage solutions since 2016 and last year we reviewed the company’s CFexpress Type A 480GB memory card one of the highest capacities of its kind at the time.
With the Gecko the company chose an interesting goal, to develop the first portable SSD that can easily connect to any camera cage and be used with supported cameras. There have been SSD holders that can fit on cages but these are fairly large compared to the flexibility offered by the Gecko.
Build and design
The Gecko is only slightly larger compared to some of the portable SSDs we tested in the past measuring just short of 13cm/4.5” long, 5cm/2” wide, and 1.5cm/0.6” thick with its included rubber cover and is IP67-certified.
The unit is made from aluminum with cooling fins on the top a small flat lanyard slot on the top and two ¼” 20 screws which connect to an included small quick release. We would probably have gone with a single ¼” 20 with Arri pin holes for anti-twist action but the inclusion of two threads with the quick release produces the same result (although it forces users to work with the supplied quick release if they want anti-twist functionality with the drive).
Another important feature that does not appear on every portable SSD is an activity light. Exascend chose a nice logo in blue, we are not sure if there is an option to turn it off but you can probably cover it up with masking tape if you really want to.
The Gecko attached to a camera cage – sadly Sony currently doesn’t allow writing to SSD drives from its cameras
Performance
We really wanted to test the drive when working directly with a camera, sadly at the moment, Sony does not allow writing into external drives from the camera (something that we would really like to see as an option in future Sony cameras).
Instead, we performed our normal tests including a test with a Desktop PC equipped with Ryzen 9 5900X processor, Asus ProArt B550-Creator motherboard (with dual TB4 ports), 500GB WD BLACK SN850 NVMe SSD and 1TB WD BLACK SN750 NVMe SSD, 64GB of 3200MHz DDR4, and the latest Win 10 Pro. This PC is equiiped with a Gigabyte USB-C 3.2 Gen 2×2 card which is essential for getting the maximum performance out of this SSD. Please note that no Mac computer currently supports this technology (so you are limited to 10Gb/s on Macs).
We started with a syntactic test courtesy of CrystalDiskMark 8 on an AMD computer with USB-C 3.2 Gen 2×2 card:
When used on a computer with 10Gb/s only we got the following score:
Next, we tested the real-world transfer speed of Gecko to and from our test PC (USB-C 3.2 Gen 2×2 card) we got the following results for transferring 182GB back and forth.
- Read: 1529MB/s.
- Write: 1028MB/s.
If you are using a PC without USB-C 3.2 Gen 2×2 your results are going to be significantly lower. On our main high-end Intel 13’th gen-based machine we only got the following (when transferring a 363GB folder):
- Read: 838MB/s.
- Write: 679MB/s.
Conclusion
The Exascend Gecko performed very well in our testing and is the fastest non-Thunderbold drive that we have tested. You will need a computer with a USB-C 3.2 Gen 2×2 and we can only hope that in the future we will see a version with USB 4 support making the drive more appealing to wider audiences who can’t enjoy its benefits at the moment.
When it comes to cage mounting – we really like the approach Exascend has taken with the Gecko. The only change that we would make is to replace the quick-release and 1/4″ connection on the SSD with one that has Arri pin holes for anti-twist action.
Working on a LensVid Talk project with the Exascend Gecko
Pricing
Pricing starts at $170 for the 1TB and goes up to $1120 for the 8TB version.
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Iddo Genuth 
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