External Storage That Can Meet Or Beat Internal Is Here
Tweaktown are one of the first to benchmark an external USB 4 SSD, the Orico Montage MTQ-40G which contains what is likely to be a WD SN730. They took their stack of SSDs and placed them in their Thunderbolt enclosure to compare the performance of a mere USB 4 connection. To start, they tested it on it’s own in CrystalDiskMark, which rates the drive at 3,166 MB/s sequential read and 2,884 MB/s write, jumping to 13,119 MB/s and 27,437 MB/s random.
The only test which the Montage MTQ-40G struggled at was the PCMark 10 data drive benchmark, though even still it was solidly in the middle of the pack. In other tests such as BlackMagic and DiskBench it trounced the competition, remaining in the top two or three for the other tests. There is one small problem however, this speed comes at a cost. The MSRP is $540 for the 2TB model, though you can reduce that somewhat with deals currently in place.
If you are curious about the colour scheme, look up Mondrian.