GET COOL
People have gotten spoiled by smartphones because they think they can carry everything they need digitally, no matter where they go, with them . That may be true when leaving the house to drive to the store or sit around in the backyard, but what about when traveling? For example visiting a friends house for an extended stay, or going to a hotel or even spending too much time in an airport terminal (or the plane if it ever takes off…). What’s needed for those times is having powerful storage capabilities exceeding that of the phone, but still small enough to fit in a pocket. So yeah that’s where Sharge’s Disk Pro 2 comes in.
A PORTABLE COOLING HUB
The Disk Pro 2 is a portable hub, not a power bank, tied in with multi-use data capabilities. That means video and audio and data and pretty much anything you can put into it that’s digital in nature. It comes with a lanyard-style USB-C cable that lets you carry it around and the fact that the cable is not permanently attached means that in the worst case scenario you can just use another purchased cable (no propriety aspects here). The cable also has a hook attachment connected as well. In other words Sharge didn’t just toss in a USB-C cable but went to the trouble and thinking to make it a useful addition.
As the Disk Pro 2 is magnetic (we almost couldn’t pull it off the fridge when trying it out), it can adhere to the back of magnet-compatible phones like iPhones (model 14 used as an example and it had a great grip even through the safety case we had on it). Sharge also makes these magnet rings that can be attached to phones so that they can be compatible (non included).
SPECS & STORAGE
Let’s get the tech specs out of the way first: what’s being delivered is up to 10Gbps read/write speeds, with 100 watts of power delivery (80 watt output). The video output is 4K, no measly 1080p. So besides using it to transfer data to/fro, you can also watch a recorded video in glorious 4K – connecting it to that hotel or friend’s TV is a simple task as the HDMI is full sized.
But before you can do anything you’ll need to put a PCIe card inside so as to have memory storage to work with (up to 8TB but our example used was 256GB). It’s pretty simple to insert the PCIe — you first remove the very small screw from the plastic cover (using a jeweler screwdriver) and then pop the cover off. The PCIe storage, which can be from 256GBs up to 2 TB, gets placed inside the compartment correctly so as to line up inside with the active slots. The plastic cover is then placed back on and so the screw is placed back in
There’s also a small 3 click tab, yellowed out for easy identification, allowing switching between the fan — more on the in a bit — being off, running on auto or full Turbo. So let’s take a gander at the ports: on one side there’s two SD slots, one full sized and the other micro. So pretty obvious what that’s all about and being given the choice between sizes is unexpected and appreciated (most devices seem to gravitate toward micro-SD slots and that’s final).
The other side has the big boys when it comes to ports. Besides a USB-2, there’s a 100 watt input/80watt PD Out, following by a HDMI 2.1 able to handle 4K resolutions at 144 Hz. The port to its right is a USB 3.0 (10Gbps 100 watt max input).
WORK THAT DATA
As can be imagined working with data moving at such high speeds creates heat, lots of it. Not good for the PCIe card or the electronics in general. So the biggest non-surprise is that there’s a very small fan built-n that derives its power from connections and is designed to blow air and so keep things cool. We did a data transfer that was over 20GB and besides being fast it normally would have generated a decent amount of heat – using the fan on Turbo obviated that from happening.
The Disk Pro 2 has a cool cyber-punk translucent appearance, is mega-useful wherever you might take it and and is only 3.5 x 2.4 x 0.4”. So yes it’s small but the speeds it generates are as fast, fast, fast as its multifunctionality is useful. Besides two versions, the Ultra reading.writing speeds faster than the Lite model as well as increasing use of the HDMI, it comes with a ring for attachment to be able to use Magsafe for those phones that otherwise couldn’t. For more go to https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/shargetech/disk-pro-2?ref=b5e74t
