Rapid advancements in flash technology has coincided with the rise of USB 3.0 as an ubiquitous high-speed interface on computers. This has led to the appearance of small and affordable direct attached storage units with very high performance for day-to-day data transfer applications. We have already looked at many flash drives with SSD controllers and a USB 3.0 - SATA bridge over the last year.

SanDisk launched the Extreme 510 Portable SSD at the 2016 CES. In terms of external appearance, it looks very similar to the Extreme 500 Portable SSD that we reviewed late last year. The only differences lie in the fact that the Extreme 510 comes in only one capacity - 480GB. It also carries a IP55 rating (dust and water resistance), thanks to the rubber bumper around the unit. It is targeted towards content creators who want rugged high capacity storage in the field.