Sony has announced a pair of external SSD drives designed with photographers and videographers in mind. The high-performance SL-M and the standard compact SL-C external SSD drives boasts ultra toughness suitable for on-the-go use, high-speed, hardware encryption and new utility software to keep data safe even in the rough environments.
Both drives feature an innovative one-piece aluminum body with an omni-directional shockproof construction and IP67 rating, ensuring dust and water will not be able to infiltrate the drive and compromise the hardware. Interestingly, the USB Type-C (USB 3.1 Gen 2) port is waterproofed even without a sealing cap, traditionally found in IP rated devices.
As far as waterproof goes, it is capable of surviving in 5 meter (16 feet) deep in the water. Rugged aspect, the drives are able to withstand pressure of up to 6,000 kgf (14,230 lbf) and bending of up to 2,000 kgf (4,410 lbf), and are impact resistant, capable of surviving drops from up to 3 meters (9.84 feet). Design-wise, it sports a clean, minimalist form with a wave surface aluminum body that offers a slip-free grip, as well as an easy-to-find silver and yellow design.
Also present is an indicator LED, plus rubber bands in bright yellow color to hold ID cables in place and label stickers to identify different drives. You can most probably find the latter in aftermarket, but it is a nice touch on Sony’s part nonetheless. On the performance department, SL-M claims a read and write speed of up to 1,000 MB/s – thanks to the NVMe SSD technology, while the SL-C makes 540 MB/s and 520 MB/s read and write speed, respectively.
Sony said the latest SSD controller found on both models afford “a constant high speed even when working with extremely large data files that are copied or overwritten many times.” Finally, the duo also touts password protection, dual password protection, AES256-bit hardware encryption, and cross platform compatibility that allows you to set a password to lock, say, from a Mac and then open from Windows PCs or Android smartphones, and vice versa.
The dual password also allows you to share a locked drive with other users with the user password without disclosing the administrator password.
Sony SL-M and SL-C External SSD Drives will drop in autumn 2019 in a choice of 500 GB, 1 TB and 2 TB capacities. However, pricing is to be confirmed.
All images courtesy of Sony.
