At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Super-tiny, convenient design SSD is IP65 rated Fast 10Gbps performance with everyday tasks Cons Pricey Drains your phone battery quickly Our Verdict Though it’s not cheap, the Lexar Go w/Hub is certainly an uber-convenient way to add a ton of 10Gbps storage and extra USB ports to your phone. It’s also moisture- and dust-proof to the tune of an IP65 rating. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Lexar Go portable SSD/Hub Retailer Price $169.99 View Deal B & H Photo $189.99 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket 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 Lexar Go travel case. You’ll want to keep it in here most of the time to avoid battery drain. 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. The Lexar Go performance easily exceeds what you’ll need for high-resolution video recording. 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’s CrystalDiskMark 8 sequential transfer numbers suffered distinctly compared to the SK Hynix Tube T31. Longer bars are better. 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. 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. Longer bars are better. 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. The Lexar Go proved aces in our 48GB transfers, beating out the arch-rival SK Hynix Tube T31 by 40 seconds. Shorter bars are better. 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. Despite it being a 2TB SSD, the Lexar Go slowed a bit during our 450GB write, though not tragically as did the Corsair Survivor Stealth. Shorter bars are better. 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. Read...

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YouTube TV users may soon need to get their fix of Tracker, Matlock, Elsbeth, and other CBS shows elsewhere thanks to yet another carriage dispute.  Subscribers to YouTube TV just got a warning that CBS, CBS Sports Network, Comedy Central, MTV, and other Paramount-owned stations will go dark after February 13—today—if the two sides fail to strike a deal before the deadline.  “We’ve been working hard to reach a fair agreement with Paramount that allows us to keep their channels, including CBS and CBS Sports, on YouTube TV without passing on additional costs to our subscribers,” YouTube said in a blog post. “Unfortunately, despite our good faith negotiations, we haven’t been successful yet.”  In a dueling blog post, Paramount argued that it had “made a series of offers to YouTube TV that are good for their customers,” and that YouTube was “attempting to pressure Paramount to agree to unfavorable and one-sided terms.”  In other words, it’s another game of chicken between two media conglomerates over a carriage deal, and YouTube TV customers—who, don’t forget, just endured a price hike—are stuck in the crossfire.  Among the stations that could go dark on YouTube TV include the CBS affiliates for 10 major metro areas, including New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Boston, and Dallas-Fort Worth.  YouTube TV users could also see two dozen Paramount channels go dark, including Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, BET, CBS Sports Network, CMT, and VH1.  Besides losing those stations, YouTube TV users could be blocked from streaming any recordings of Paramount content in their DVR libraries.  YouTube TV says it may offer users an $8 credit if it can’t reach a deal with Paramount for “an extended period of time.” That $8 credit would cover a month’s worth of Paramount+, which offers streams of local CBS stations as well as all the soon-to-be-blocked Paramount stations.  These types of disputes are nothing new, of course, and they tend to roll around whenever a carriage agreement between a TV network and a cable and/or streaming provider is about to expire.  Just four years ago, YouTube TV and Comcast mixed it up over NBCUniversal stations, with the latter coming close to yanking NBC and other TV channels from YouTube TV’s lineup. In that case, the two sides struck a deal with days to spare.  It’s certainly possible that the latest YouTube TV-Paramount dispute will end with a similar last-minute reprieve, but watching the game of high-stakes poker isn’t much fun for YouTube TV subscribers, who are now paying $83 a month for the service’s base plan. Read...

Intel’s new Core Ultra 200 processors offer a huge leap forward in performance on top of all-day battery life. They’re a huge improvement over their predecessors. But these new “Arrow Lake” chips leave out an absolute necessity of today’s PCs: an NPU, the engine which powers AI performance across the board. We knew this going into my review of Intel’s Core Ultra 9 285H inside of an MSI laptop. But it might be time for Intel — and maybe AMD, too — to take a step back and consider what consumers really want: a “good,” one-size-fits-all mainstream PC. And a clear way to identify them! Every time I review a chip or another product, I try to unearth the “story” behind it. We all do. Our recent Nvidia GeForce 5090 review contained numerous charts and graphs, but the card can be boiled down to a pretty basic statement: AI-generated frames are the future. The story that Intel wants to tell with the Core Ultra 200H series is a simple one: everyone, this is the mainstream processor you’ll look for in buying your next laptop. In some benchmarks, it doubles the performance of its predecessor, Lunar Lake. It offers the same great battery life. What the Core 200H doesn’t offer is a great NPU. Instead, its AI performance is just 13 TOPS, well below the performance requirements of Microsoft’s Copilot+ program. That means that Intel really can’t pitch a Core 200H laptop to anyone who wants to buy into Microsoft’s Copilot+ vision, now or in the future. It’s an unforced error, and an obvious one. Intel, and to some extent other PC chipmakers, are losing track of what a “mainstream” PC processor should be: a single chip family that offers a good CPU, GPU, and NPU for complete performance. AI is the future, like it or not I know many of you aren’t sold on the need for AI on a local PC, and that’s fine. But all we’ve heard from everyone, from Microsoft to Intel to AMD and Qualcomm and OpenAI and Google and Meta and — you get the idea — is that AI is inextricably wound into the fabric of consumer computing. Whether it’s used or not, a Copilot+ class NPU simply has to be there. Recall may be controversial, but there are many more applications that can tap local AI.Mark Hachman / IDG And AI is valuable. Microsoft rather annoyingly doesn’t even try to bring some of its AI features to non-Copilot+ PCs. But I honestly will put down the laptop I’m using and switch to a Snapdragon-powered PC just so I can access Microsoft’s advanced editing features in Photos, such as upscaling a blurry little screenshot. I might not go out and specifically buy a laptop just to access those features, but you can be damn sure I’ll use them when they’re available. If you’re unimpressed by what Microsoft offers, including Recall, I get it. But as we’ve seen, major developments in AI can take place overnight. Don’t expect them all to come from Microsoft. Intel is too fragmented Intel could have designed in a modern NPU to the Core 200H and solved the problem. Instead, the company offers multiple products, and asks consumers to pick and choose between them. Intel’s older Meteor Lake architecture, the Core Ultra 100, offers solid performance, good battery life, and an anemic NPU — sound familiar? Intel’s Core 200V family, aka Lunar Lake, is the Snapdragon killer, with a robust NPU and fantastic battery life. To that we now have the Core 200H, which uses an entirely different architecture but shares a virtually identical product name. All of these are still available from retailers. Sometime in the near future Intel will ship the Intel Core HX, a processor for high-performance gaming laptops that will also be based on Intel’s Arrow Lake architecture. (Expect that chip to be sharply scrutinized, as it’s the mobile version of the desktop Arrow Lake chip that received some harsh criticism. ) MSI’s latest Prestige AI notebook, the launch vehicle for Intel’s Arrow Lake-H or Core Ultra 200H chip.Mark Hachman / IDG In some ways, Intel’s marketing efforts are a shambles. Wind back the clock three or four years ago, and we all pretty much understood that a “U” series chip was for thin-and-light PCs, and the more powerful H- and HX-series were where you’d find gaming-class processors. But they were all essentially the same thing. Now, consumers really have to read the fine print to understand what they’re buying. Hey, I despise using Macs, but everyone understands that better-best branding that Apple uses. M1, M2, M3, M4. Ultra. Pro. Max. How hard is that? AMD and Qualcomm, pay attention What Apple understands is the concept of “mainstream.” The thing you buy when an aunt says, “I just want a good PC.” The only one among the PC chip vendors who seems to get this is AMD, which launched the Ryzen AI 300 family with just two models last year, the AI 9 HX 370 and the AI 9 365. Yes, the model numbers are overdone, but there’s no question which chips to buy if you want a Ryzen notebook. Unlike Intel, the Ryzen AI 300 family all ships with the things you want: a killer CPU, a great GPU, and 50 TOPS worth of NPU power, too. Perfect. I’m as excited about the Ryzen AI Max as anyone. But it will be a niche product.AMD Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors also combine excellent CPU, GPU, and NPU performance in a single chip — but their marketing department seems somehow compelled to follow Intel’s lead. Right now, Qualcomm claims about 10 percent of the PC market at $800 and above, and that’s great. Such a small share doesn’t demand slicing the Snapdragon brand into X Elite, X Plus, and whatever other brands it’s using. That’s the only thing I worry a bit about with AMD. In addition to AMD’s existing AI 300 parts, the company plans to add the mobile Ryzen 9955HX3D products and the upcoming Ryzen AI Max. All of them distract people away from that central question: “What should I buy?” Look, this is not hard. Yes, people buy sports cars. But they also buy an overwhelming number of Toyota Corollas, too. Some chipmaker simply needs to step up and clearly say “this is the chip you — and I mean everyone — needs to buy.” And it needs to be a complete offering, with an NPU. So who’s it gonna be? Further reading: Rising to the TOPS: How will NPUs and Windows AI grow in 2025? Read...

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