There aren't a lot of devices I refuse to leave home without. There's my phone and camera, obviously, and a PocketTalk translator if I'm working somewhere that English isn't the first language. But there's one more device that I always slip into my camera bag or pocket, no matter where I am: the Lexar Professional Go Portable SSD.
I'm shooting more and more video these days, both as a dad with a six-month-old and as someone who covers press events and shoot a lot of social media content. I still shoot all my photos on a mirrorless camera, but for video my phone is infinitely quicker and more convenient – and when I take my iPhone, I can record in ludicrously good ProRes RAW if I want to.
But the one area where a camera would beat my phone is storage. Yes, shooting 4K 60p in ProRes RAW looks great, but it gobbles up the space on my phone faster than Pac-Man on a power pill binge. Lasy year I actually had to buy a duplicate phone, because I'd run out of space even after playing my usual hokey-kokey with apps and files.
This is where the Go has become an invaluable part of my workflow, both personally and professionally. This teeny tiny portable SSD is about half the length of a stick of gum, but it gives me two terabytes of lightning-fast storage that I can record directly to – even when I'm churning through PreRes footage flubbing my lines and repeating take after take.
It's hard to be precise, because I'm usually juggling a lot of files when I'm using this in the field, but I've comfortably shot about a couple of hours of ProRes on this thing before I figured I'd better transfer everything to my computer – which I could never dream of doing with just my phone!
With read and write speeds of 1,050MB/s and 1,000MB/s, I don't have to worry about frame drops or any kind of impact on my footage at all – it's like capturing natively to my phone, which gives me peace of mind while I'm focused on filming.
I'd assume you can do exactly the same thing if you've got a fancier phone that shoots 8K, but mine doesn't so I didn't get to test that – and you'd also have to be mindful about overheating, which wasn't a problem for me, but obviously you're going to generate more heat the more resolution you're pumping through.
I recently discovered just how tough it is, too, as an errant cup of coffee in a café gave it a bath I hadn't intended. While I was less than thrilled to have wasted almost ten bucks on my undrunk mocha, the Go survived completely unscathed thanks to its IP65 rating for dust and water (and apparently coffee) resistance.
This clever little cookie is more than just small and caffeine-proof, however; it comes with a brilliant hub that enables me to expand to a full shooting setup when I need to. It has four USB-C ports, including a 30W PD charging port, meaning I can slap in a light and microphone receiver without having extra cables trailing all over the place.
I try to avoid doing that whenever possible, otherwise I may as well use my camera to film video, but when needs must this really does change the game – for starters, I'll never have to use the huge horrible rig I used to be stuck with ever again.
And once I'm done shooting, I can connect it straight to my laptop and transfer all my files for editing – or to my wife's phone if we're overseas and I want to use her 5G coverage which is somehow better than mine even though we're on the same network.
The Lexar Professional Go Portable SSD has been a real revelation. I've been testing it ever since CP+ in Japan earlier this year, where it was such a life saver when working in cramped press rooms and on the show floor. If you're someone who creates content on your phone – or who just wants a tiny SSD that's the same size as the eraser in your kid's pencil case – this one comes highly recommended.
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