Ugreen CM766 Portable SSD 1TB Review — truly premium

Ugreen CM766 Portable SSD 1TB

8

This drive is incredibly well-built and performs reasonably well, definitely worth getting at its Taobao list price of RM360, but not at its local price tag of RM899.

What's Good?

• Very sleek zinc alloy enclosure
• Good, consistent performance
• Well-managed thermals

What's Not?

• USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 is an extremely niche standard
• RM899 price tag is ridiculous

The Ugreen CM766 Portable SSD 1TB might just be the next accessory to get for your iPhone. Since the iPhone 15 Pro, you will need an external drive for you to fully harness its potential as a “Pro” device, since you need it to record ProRes footage. If you intend to take advantage of ProRes capture on your iPhone Pro, this compact, sleek, external SSD looks like a pretty good option for you.

Ugreen CM766 Portable SSD — What’s Good?

One thing that the Ugreen CM766 really stands out from the competition is its extremely slim design. While many other external SSD usually go thicker and longer, Ugreen went with an 8mm thin zinc alloy chassis that is smaller than a credit card. Garnished with some stripes on the front side that also double as additional surface area for cooling, the Ugreen CM766 Portable SSD looks very sleek, perfect to match the Pro iPhones. Heck, it even has a Red Dot Award for its design.

Now, I would also like to mention that the Ugreen CM766 is actually designed for way more than just iPhones. The Ugreen CM766 Portable SSD harnesses the stepchilded USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 standard, which means you can get up to 20Gbps speeds when connected to something that supports it. Unfortunately, that’s quite rare. Most systems today either support USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) or Thunderbolt 4, both of which will limit the drive to just 10Gbps speeds. Thunderbolt 5 devices may support USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 tunneling, but it’s an optional specification so don’t count on it. MacBook Pros with Thunderbolt 5 apparently don’t, so there’s that.

With all that said, I benchmarked it with my ROG Crosshair VIII Hero (Wi-Fi) motherboard, and the Ugreen CM766 falls a bit short of the 10Gbps speeds it should theoretically achieve. It ended up being slightly slower in sequential transfers than the Kingston XS1000 2TB we previously reviewed, but random speeds were ever so slightly faster. In any case, my iPhone 15 Pro had no issues with recording ProRes footage to it as well, so I guess it’s sufficiently fast for that purpose.

If you’re particularly nitpicky, it can be considered that the fact that the Ugreen CM766 isn’t an enclosure-based design to be a downside. Ugreen harnessed the Silicon Motion SM2320G controller along with four NAND chips labeled MRT1TC48CX490, the latter which googling didn’t yield any results. However, it also means that there will be fewer heat-generating controllers in the Ugreen CM766, and an overall more efficient package, both in terms of power consumption and cost.

On the topic of heat, the Ugreen CM766 Portable SSD has a large thermal pad over the controller and more than some of the NAND chips. Covering all the NAND chips with the thermal pad may be the better solution to ensure maximum reliability, but the NAND chips won’t really heat up at these speeds. Even as we’re hammering the drive with AIDA64’s Linear Write benchmark — which the drive passed with flying colors with supremely consistent performance — the drive barely felt warm to the touch.

Ugreen CM766 Portable SSD — What’s Not?

The Ugreen CM766 has proven to be a pretty solid drive, but I would say that Ugreen may have slapped a grossly overinflated price tag on it. If we were to go off the Shopee listing price, they’re asking for RM899 for it, which is ludicrous. The Kingston XS1000 is thicker but otherwise more compact, comes in at less than half the price while featuring the same SM2320 controller and practically the same performance except on some niche systems that support USB 3.2 Gen 2×2. The sleek zinc alloy chassis of the Ugreen CM766 may be significantly more upmarket than the plastic shell of the Kingston external drive, but I still can’t justify more than double the cost.

Ugreen CM766 Portable SSD Specifications

Ugreen CM766 Portable SSD — should you buy this?

The Ugreen CM766 Portable SSD is a solid choice, if you want a premium external SSD that can go well with your sleek new MacBook. It’s faultless when it comes to performance and its design and build quality is definitely a key highlight. However, it also lacks weatherproofing, which feels like a miss at this price point. Other more technical nitpicks include the fact is that you can’t really take full advantage of the 20Gbps speeds with most systems, along with the bummer that you can’t upgrade the capacity down the line with a standard M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD.

For RM899, the Ugreen CM766 feels rather overpriced. I can see that Ugreen committed to a premium design and build quality with a sleek zinc alloy enclosure, but when it comes to bang-for-buck in a cutthroat external storage scene, this one doesn’t quite make the cut. With all that said, the Ugreen CM766 is listed on Taobao at just CNY 599 (approx. RM360). Now, that’s a really good price. Why the huge gap in the pricing? Well, that you’ll have to ask Ugreen.

Help support us!

If you are interested in the Ugreen CM766 or the Kingston XS1000, we would really appreciate if you purchase them via the link below. The affiliate links won’t cost you any extra, but it will be a great help to keep our lights on here at HelloExpress.

• Kingston XS1000 (Lazada): https://s.lazada.com.my/s.6kOPN
• Kingston XS1000 (Shopee): https://s.shopee.com.my/6KvoBrli7r
• Ugreen CM766 (Lazada): https://s.lazada.com.my/s.HmRkt
• Ugreen CM766 (Shopee): https://s.shopee.com.my/5VMhCUGFgO