Kingston XS2000 4TB External SSD review: Features, specs, price

The external Kingston XS2000 SSD works well enough, but doesn’t quite reach its full speed potential on Mac because of Apple’s design choices.

With the massive bandwidth available for USB 4 and Thunderbolt connections, external SSDs are generally the best way to get more storage on a Mac. Typically compact, they can work at about the same speed as Apple’s own internal drives.

That is, assuming you get a Thunderbolt one. The Kingston XS2000 is not that.

It is a decent choice. It’s fast enough, and on the higher side of affordable, but still in the range. It’s just not the best choice for Apple users because of what Apple chooses to support for USB standards.

Kingston XS2000 External SSD review: Physical design

An external drive aimed at Mac users generally follows a well-traveled design ethos. Brushed metal is generally de rigeur, and Kingston doesn’t disappoint on this front.

When the rubber bumper is installed, the top has a small divot across most of the surface, which oddly helps with grip when carrying the drive around.

A hand holding a small rectangular device with a black border and a white center featuring the word Kingston.

Kingston XS2000 External SSD review: Inside its rubber casing

The XS2000 is a rectangular block of storage, measuring 2.71 inches by 1.28 inches and 0.53 inches thick. At this size, it’s hard to come up with a better shape without sacrificing on physical volume, and that’s OK here.

As it is, and with its 28.9-gram (1.02 ounces) weight, it is a very easily transportable storage device. This is something you could regularly carry around with an iPhone, let alone a MacBook Pro.

While Kingston does well with the Mac-like appearance, it also handles the other major trope of external storage options — a (mostly) rugged device that can handle a camping trip.

It is supplied with a black rubber sleeve that protects the edges while leaving the top-side divot (and Kingston logo) exposed. This also a byproduct of the sleeve adding more grip here.

The sleeve is meant to help protect it from drops of up to 6 feet, as well as knocks while in a pocket or bag. It’s also got an IP55 rating, so it can handle a bit of dust and water splashes, but not submersion.

However, if you’re using it at home, you may be better off taking the rubber bit off for aesthetic reasons.

Kingston XS2000 External SSD review: Connectivity and speed

The method of connecting the Kingston XS2000 to your Mac or other hardware is over USB Type-C. Supplied with a 12-inch USB-C to USB-C cable, it will work with a USB-C connection or one that is compatible with it, including Thunderbolt ports.

This is where there is a small problem creeps in, at least on the Mac side.

Hand holding a small black device with a USB-C port, against a blurred gray background.

Kingston XS2000 External SSD review: It uses USB 3.2 Gen 2×2. Mac does not.

Kingston includes support for USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 for the drive using the Silicon Motion SM2320 chipset paired with Micron 96L 3D TLC flash cells and an approximate 100GB SLC cache, which provides for up to 20Gbps speed for about five minutes — on a Windows machine. The issue is that Apple doesn’t actively support USB 3.2 Gen 2×2, so the dual-lane 20Gbps connectivity falls back to USB 3.2 Gen 2 instead.

On a Mac and iPhone, it connects over USB-C at 10Gbps, half the potential speed. But, as a bonus, it never seems to fill the cache, so this speed is maintained on the Mac.

Connection speed aside, the drive is compatible with macOS 10.14 and later, as well as iOS and iPadOS 13 or later, Android and Chrome OS devices, Windows desktops, and game consoles.

The storage inside the drive is 3D NAND flash, available in capacities between 500GB and 4TB. This is a decent range, with 4TB being on the high side for this compact a device.

Kingston markets the drive as having read and write speeds at up to 2,000MB/s for both reads and writes. This would certainly be possible with the full USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 connectivity, but on half the bandwidth, the theoretical maximum on Mac should be 1,250MB/s.

We didn’t see that max speed, but you never do. We realistically saw about 800 megabytes per second, as we said, maintained effectively indefinitely.

Good enough, and better than SATA.

Kingston XS2000 External SSD review: Costly but compact

The Kingston XS2000 goes is very usable piece of external storage for your Mac. As a backup drive or a scratch disk for projects, it certainly handles each very well.

It’s also extremely portable and offers decent durability, albeit with the addition of a rubber covering.

The main downsides to the drive are cost and speed.

Kingston XS2000 External SSD review: M4 Mac mini for scale.

It’s hard to justify paying a $349 list price, or $269.99 sale price, for an external 4TB drive that runs at 10 gigabits per second on the Mac, even indefinitely. That $269 sale price is in the ballpark of a “roll your own” combo of enclosure and drive, and you’d get more speed to boot.

But, if you just want to grab something small, and is good enough, there are far worse choices. Kingston has engineered a nice drive here, but it’s a shame that Apple doesn’t support USB-C 3.2 2×2.