Sometimes the best things in life are those you must wait a little while for. While meeting with industry makers at Computex 2023, we were invited to join the team from Kingston — because they had new wares to peddle, and we had time on our hands.
Kingston is a well-known and respected tech brand, and we have been using their SD cards in our Blackmagic cameras for a while. However, having an SSD with fast read and write capabilities is far more useful when filming larger projects. As we walked around Kingston's suite, we were introduced to the XS1000 External SSD — a tiny, data-moving speed demon in gleaming black armor. It was love at first Megabyte, in this case, 1000MBs read and write, allowing us to film directly to it, even while shooting in 8K resolution.
Kingston XS1000 External Drive
When you first get a hold of the perfectly pocket-sized XS1000, you won't believe it can read and write so quickly, or how sturdy this thing is. However, the tiny aluminum and hard plastic matte black XS1000 reads and writes at speeds of 1,000MBs and features USB 3.2 Gen 2 with back support making it compatible with USB 3.2.
The Kingston XS1000 fits snuggly into the palm of your hand, or pocket, for easy carrying. Although not currently available, this portable powerhouse will be ready for purchase in Q3 of 2023 — and likely to sell out fast as content creators rush to revel in all that speed, not to mention up to 2TB of storage. Being able to not only film directly to it but having such a large storage capacity at all times is time-saving.
Gone are the days of awkwardly lugging around a backpack crammed with hefty hard drives. If things keep heading in this direction, I'll be strolling through Computex 2024 with nothing more than a stick and bindle, and still be kitted out with enough top-tier tech to make Deep Blue blush. We should have a clearer picture of availability dates and pricing the closer we get to Q3, and rest assured, a review will follow, so we can put Kingston's scaled-down SSD to the test and share all the details on how it fares.
However, if the XS1000 is anything like its sibling, the XS2000, Kingston has a real winner on its hands.
