The Twopan Portable SSD 2TB is a good external storage option intended for your iPhone and iPad, but its retail cost is prohibitive, so wait for a good sale.
Beating the storage limits of an iPhone or iPad can be done in two ways. You can use cloud storage, or your can attach an external storage device.
All the second option requires is an external drive with a USB-C connection that can plug into an iPhone, iPad, or Mac. However, typical external drives take up space, and aren’t great for carrying around.
The Twopan Portable SSD is part of a new breed of storage device, designed to connect to an iPhone and take up as little space as possible.
I’ve got the 2TB version on my test bench.
Twopan Portable SSD review – Physical design
Measuring 2.5 inches wide by 1.3 inches by 0.5 inches, the Twopan Portable SSD is very small with rounded corners. Equipped with a USB-C plug in the top, it slots right into the port at the base of an iPhone, and is almost as wide.
While ideal for a mobile device with a single USB-C port, it’s not easy to plug it into a desktop Mac because of that port orientation and Apple’s insistence on vertically-oriented USB-C ports for the most part. Use an extension cable instead.
Twopan Portable SSD review: The USB-C plug sticks out the top.
Attached directly to the base of an iPhone isn’t the only way to do it, as you can also attach it to the rear MagSafe element of an iPhone, and use an extension cable. The box contains two J-shaped cables to accommodate this, so you don’t need to buy anything to do that.
The front-facing panel of the the drive consists of a shiny black surface, complete with a circle and the capacity printed to one side. When turned on, this shows an LCD screen for the device on the left, while lights appear around the capacity label.
The display offers real-time monitoring of the drive, including how much storage is in use and power usage. This is nice in theory, but this setup is pretty obnoxious in low-light or in the dark. Fortunately, it turns off by itself pretty quickly.
Twopan Portable SSD review: The base has a USB-C port, supporting both charging and data.
At the base is an additional USB-C port, which can be used for pass-through charging to the iPhone itself, or to add more USB-C accessories. While power support extends to 27 Watts, the data pass-through is more modest, at just USB 2.0 speeds.
Despite being extremely compact, the drive also houses a small fan to cool down the storage while in use. In our testing we didn’t hear the fan, so that’s a plus.
Twopan Portable SSD review – Storage
The Twopan Portable SSD is offered in three capacities, from 512GB up to 2TB, with the higher-end option provided for review. Since the iPhone 15 Pro and later can record 4K ProRes video to an external USB-C drive, this makes the drive an extremely useful item for videographers.
Twopan Portable SSD review: It takes up little space below an iPhone
Twopan claims that it is capable of 1000MB/s maximum read and write speeds in its marketing. Our testing bore this out.
Twopan Portable SSD review – Useful but expensive
At a bare minimum, the Twopan Portable SSD does the job. You can certainly use it for external video recording on an iPhone, which makes it handy.
Twopan Portable SSD review: It’s compact and handy, if you can deal with the bright lights in the dark.
However, it is also fairly expensive storage, especially at the manufacturer’s $399.99 price tag for the 2TB model. On Amazon, at press time, it’s a more digestable $279 using an on-page coupon.
But, don’t rely on that pricing. Over the course of the review, it was listed at full retail for most of the evaluation period.
Twopan Portable SSD review – Pros
- Compact and portable
- Fast enough for video
Twopan Portable SSD review – Cons
- Display is obnoxious in the dark
- High pricing
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Where to buy the Twopan Portable SSD
The 2TB model is sold from Twopan directly for $399.99. Don’t buy it for that price.
As of April 10, 2025, On Amazon, there’s a 20% coupon on the $349.99 price, making it $279. That’s far more reasonable for the device, and in-line with other options from bigger names.
