• Business Insider asked successful men across industries what shoes they love to wear.
• Many shared that they prefer sneakers, typically from classic brands like Nike and New Balance.
• Others mentioned authentic cowboy boots and luxury loafers.

We'd all like to step into the shoes of the world's most successful people.

So, while speaking with businessmen across industries, Business Insider asked them to name their favorite fragrances, clothing brands, luxury home items, and, of course, footwear.

Sneakers reigned supreme, but you'll also find cowboy boots and designer loafers in their closets.

One real-estate agent likes to wear trendy sneakers with his professional ensembles.

"Man, I love shoes," Bryce Grandison, 28, told BI.

The Georgia-based real-estate agent, who formerly worked as a real-estate analyst and was named a BI rising star, rotates between various pairs of classic sneakers.

He wears Nike Air Max 1s ($140 - $180), Stan Smith tennis shoes from Adidas ($100 - $350), and kicks from Roger Federer's collaboration with On ($140 - $200).

"I love to keep it business casual always, anytime, anywhere I go," Grandison said. "Ideally, no matter what I have on, I want to come across as a business professional."

"Whether I have a sweatsuit on with my Nikes, or if I have Lululemon slacks on, a half-zip top, and my Roger Federer On running shoes, you can see that it's a multifaceted look that's put together very well," he added.

A venture capitalist is loyal to sneakers made from eucalyptus tree fiber.

Rob Beiderman, 38, founded Asymmetric Capital Partners in 2021 and is now the fund's managing partner.

Whether at work or on the go, the former BI rising star says he wears sneakers from Allbirds "almost every day."

He specifically loves the brand's Tree Runners, which are made from eucalyptus tree fiber and designed for walking. They retail between $98 and $120 a pair.

"I love traveling with them because you can exercise and wear them for meetings," Beiderman said.

Occasionally, however, he swaps them for canvas slides from Toms.

While working in the art world, cowboy boots are one professional's go-to shoe.

Paul Hill, 25, is the founder of the art-tech company Strada. He told BI that he wears brown cowboy boots from the Texas-based brand Justin most days in his office.

He described the boots, which retail between $134 and over $1,000 each, as extremely versatile.

"I bike to work every single day, and I love how, with cowboy boots, it's kind of like stirrups. They just lock into the bike pedals super easily," he said. "And they're so comfortable."

Hill said he became interested in the style in high school and bought his first pair during college. He's worn them ever since.

"I went to boarding school for high school in Asheville, North Carolina, and that's where I first got introduced to cowboy boots," he said. "So, for me, they're just a little piece I can carry with me from the time I've spent outside New York City."

A clothing entrepreneur pairs items from his own brand with classic kicks.

Robert Felder, 30, is the founder and CEO of the clothing company Bearbottom.

He told BI that he exclusively wears the brand's designs because he loves them and is always testing new products.

Shoes, however, are another story.

"I typically wear sneakers," he said. "I have some New Balances that I really like wearing, and Reebok. Those are the two sneaker brands that I've been wearing a lot."

Felder alternates between the $90 Club C 85 Vintage kicks from Reebok and the $110 BB550 shoes from New Balance.

He said he also occasionally wears classic $150 Birkenstock clogs but never to work.

A finance professional said Vince makes his favorite sneakers.

Reed Switzer, 24, founded the fintech company Hopscotch, which helps small businesses pay bills more easily.

He said he likes keeping his footwear "a little more basic" and subtle.

"I have plain white shoes from Vince that go with everything," he said. "You can't go wrong."

The Fulton sneakers he's talking about are made from leather and retail for $198.

A dermatologist and CEO sticks with dress shoes for workdays.

Reid Waldman, 30, spends his days working as a dermatologist and the CEO of his biopharmaceutical company, Veradermics.

He told BI that the shoes he wears largely depend on how dressy his outfit is.

"If I'm wearing a blazer and slacks, then I'll wear loafers, like a pair from Ferragamo," he said. "If it's suit, I wear Oxfords."

He also buys most of his designer wardrobe secondhand.

"I don't think I've bought any brand-new clothes in several years," he told BI. "I am an avid shopper of The RealReal."

• Tim Jordan, M.D., a counselor who supports young girls, also provides CEOs with parenting support.
• He said successful parents make the mistake of overscheduling their kids in extracurriculars.
• They also overindulge their child's requests for new things, feeling that they can't say no.

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Tim Jordan, M.D., 70, a counselor for teenage girls from St. Louis. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I've been a counselor for around 30 years. For the past 15 or so years, my practice has been exclusively for middle school, high school, and college-aged girls.

I've been married to my wife for 43 years. We both started out in medical careers but then developed our own business focusing on parenting classes, talks, and weekend retreats.

For many years, we've worked with YPO, a membership community for chief executives, creating family events to support members with parenting and giving talks in their various chapters around the world.

I've noticed executives are very hungry for information about parenting. Although their business lives are set, and they're pretty successful, they're still open to learning more about raising their kids.

Across my experience meeting chief executives and helping families through my counseling practice, I've spotted some key mistakes successful parents make when raising their kids.

1. Overscheduling kids in extracurricular activities

Successful parents want their kids to be successful. They want them to be at the top of their class or on the best soccer team.

Everything is about their children's future, as opposed to what their kids like to do.

I once saw a high schooler in my counseling practice who was so burned out. She was on the cheer team, so had to go to practices and games, but she also did competitive dance, which was what she really loved. She wanted to quit cheerleading but said her parents wouldn't let her because they were concerned about how dropping out would impact her college prospects.

Parents are coming from a place of fear that their kids will get left behind. They want their kid to have a leg up. It's a rampant fear in our culture.

I think it's important for kids to pick their activities but also have some free time.

I recently spoke to another family with a daughter in sixth grade. She does volleyball and gymnastics, among other things. I told her dad there was something missing in her list of activities: play and downtime. Time to do things she enjoys, like reading or doing artwork — not because it's going to be in her portfolio, but because she likes to draw.

Unsupervised play is a great way for kids to learn, but they have little time for it these days.

2. Trying to be the driving force behind your child's motivation

When parents push their kids, they'll ask me, "How do I motivate my daughter?"

I tell them they're asking the wrong question. It's not your job to motivate your kids. A better question would be, "How do I support my child's intrinsic motivation?"

A good way to support a child's motivation is to ask them questions to make them think about why they want A's at school or why they like soccer.

Once, my wife and I were speaking to a girl who was a gymnast. We asked what she liked about gymnastics. She started talking, but her dad interjected and told her to show us her trophies.

We could tell her awards weren't what drove her, so we repeated the question. She said her favorite thing was the floor routine. She liked it when all eyes were on her, and she entertained people. That was her intrinsic motivation for loving gymnastics. We derive more satisfaction from things if we're doing them for our reasons instead of to please others.

Listen to why your kid enjoys something and use that understanding to encourage them. You're not always going to be there to push and micromanage your kids. They need to learn to push themselves by focusing on why they want to do things and how it's meaningful to them.

3. Overindulging your child's requests for new things

I've found that the executives I work with are very worried about whether their kids will be spoiled or if they'll have ambition. Many of these parents worked hard but are conscious that their kids don't have to do that because they're born into affluence.

Some have even said they're worried flying first class could spoil their child.

My wife and I tell them it's amazing their child can receive education through wonderful trips. That won't spoil them, but what will is if you immediately comply every time your child asks for something new.

Affluent parents sometimes think they should grant requests because they can afford it, but I encourage the attitude that the money parents have created is theirs, not their children's. Kids aren't entitled to one cent of it unless the parents gift it to them.

Get your kids to earn things and put some sweat equity into it. It will allow them to develop a work ethic.

Once when we were out with my son, he wanted a new Lego pirate ship. We told him we weren't willing to buy it and he could use his allowance money. However, it was around $75, which shocked him. We encouraged him to rake some leaves and do jobs in the neighborhood if he really wanted it.

4. Not sharing your stories

Kids look up to their moms and dads and see the finished product. They see a successful business or happy marriage, but they haven't seen the parent as an awkward 12-year-old struggling with self-doubt or when a parent didn't make the basketball team.

Every entrepreneur I've talked to has had at least one business failure, if not many. Successful parents can show their children that things aren't always smooth by sharing stories of failure.

I think parents don't tend to think about sharing their stories with their children. But when a child makes a mistake and is really bummed out, sharing a relatable story shows you know how they feel. Kids love hearing stories and it connects them on a deeper level with their parents. It makes them feel safe to share things in return.

Do you have a story to share about parenting as a chief executive? Contact this reporter at [email protected]

• One of Biden's top DEI chiefs said she wants to dispel "myths" amid Trump's rollback of the practice.
• Alaysia Black Hackett told Business Insider that corporations should hold firm to DEI practices.
• She said that companies are now reaching out to her for advice.

A former DEI chief who served in the Biden administration wants to "dispel a lot of the myths" swirling around diversity initiatives.

These include the idea that DEI hires aren't recruited on merit, or that diversity initiatives are only aimed at benefiting Black People, said Alaysia Black Hackett, who served as the Department of Labor's chief diversity and equity officer before resigning last month.

"It is not: 'You have to make sure you have a woman in a leadership position," Black Hackett said in an interview with Business Insider. "It is looking at the data to say: 'What groups of people are we missing and how can this be a detriment to the service?'"

The sentiment toward DEI has been shifting in recent months. According to the Pew Research Center, the percentage of people who see DEI as a positive fell from 56% to 52% between February 2023 and October 2024. At the same time, those who saw it as a bad thing grew from 16% to 21%.

But Black Hackett says the field is misunderstood, in part thanks to a tough media environment, and the Biden administration not being good at touting its own achievements. She said she believes people don't want to understand what diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility really stand for.

"People want to hate it because it seemed to benefit one race of people more than it fits another," she said.

What does DEI do?

During her two and a half years in the Biden administration, Black Hackett said federal hiring initiatives were merit-based and designed to "ensure that our internal federal workforce mirrored the communities that we serve."

If federal bodies lacked diversity of thought, "we're going to miss something," she said.

Black Hackett described much of her work as being aimed at making sure that federal funding filtered through to people who are either under-resourced, or are in historically underrepresented groups.

Much of her work focused on determining how federal funding could effectively reach marginalized communities. This included identifying rural communities that needed better internet access — a fixture in Biden's infrastructure law in 2021.

"When you look at data about rural communities, you will see that it's not typically inundated with people of color," she said, adding that "most Americans fit under at least one of the categories under DEIA."

Impact on corporate DEI

President Donald Trump signed an executive order last month ending DEI programs in the federal government. The Trump administration has said DEI "divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars, and resulted in shameful discrimination."

Trump has directed federal agencies to compile lists of private companies' DEI efforts, and many, including Meta and Walmart, have decided to roll back or end their DEI programs. Others, like JP Morgan and Costco, have not altered course on their diversity policies.

Black Hackett said that companies are reaching out to her for advice.

"I have small business owners who are asking me: 'Alaysia, what do I do? What direction is this going to impact me?'" she said.

She said that companies feeling cowed should "bunker down, stand up for what's right, and look at your data" to see the benefits.

"Productivity goes up," she said. "Statistics show that. People are more productive if they feel like they're welcome in their environment, their thoughts, their opinions."

A 2022 report by the International Labor Organization said that DEI can add value to businesses through increased employee productivity, stronger collaboration with colleagues, and improved well-being.

The recent DEI rollback could make people become "afraid to even show up as their authentic selves," Black Hackett said.

Even so, she feels positive about the future of DEI initiatives.

"What I will say, and I will say it quite candidly, is DEIA is resilient," she said. "The work doesn't stop."

The White House didn't reply to a request for comment.

• Jerry Cascio-Hitchcock, 92, continues teaching, driven by a passion for education.
• Cascio-Hitchcock's career began unexpectedly, leading to a lifelong love for teaching.
• She emphasizes the importance of pursuing passions and acknowledges her privileged background.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with (Marjory) Jerry Cascio-Hitchcock, a 92-year-old teacher based in New York City. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Two things have made my 60-year teaching career possible: first, I truly fell in love with teaching.

I was an early childhood teacher for many years, and when I felt at the top of my game, I found that I was most interested in the kids with learning difficulties. Other teachers would explain that a student had been awful, and I'd say, "That's fascinating."

Second, I could change my focus, so I didn't get bored. There are always new challenges at school.

I'm still not bored — at age 92, I haven't retired yet.

I didn't plan to become a teacher

I went to Oberlin, took office jobs, and thought about being a librarian. When my son was in nursery school, I was invited to help. I fell in love with teaching.

To my surprise, I decided to become a teacher. I graduated with a degree in English literature and a minor in history.

When I started, I loved it so much. I remember walking home one day and thinking, "Wow, I can't believe I'm paid to do this."

I taught at Churchill, a school for children with learning disabilities, for two years before entering private tutoring. I next joined LREI, a school in Manhattan, almost 20 years ago.

I work five days a week. My commute usually takes 30 minutes, although I allow for 45 to get to work. I used to do summer tutoring, but now I rest during the summer.

I tell my students to find something they love

When my students ask, "What should I do?" I always say, "Find something you love." If you're privileged enough to follow what you love and make some sacrifices to do so, do it. Those who can are so lucky, and I count myself among them.

My husband worked in off-Broadway theater, and I didn't bring in much money. At one point, we lived below the poverty level with our two kids, but my family was well-to-do. They seldom helped us financially, but we were fortunate to know they could help if necessary. That's what generational wealth can do.

I'm very aware of that, and I always mention it to my students because I work at a private school. Many come from families like mine, and they aren't always aware.

Today, I share a learning center with two other teachers

We have regular classes with students with learning disabilities. Our open plan keeps the learning center open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Any kid can come anytime.

We see some of the smartest kids in the class come in needing help with math. It reduces the stigma for other kids with more profound learning issues because they know that anyone can come in at any time.

Almost half of our students have some sort of learning disability

These are fascinating kids, and I am fascinated with them. The human brain is so specific — you think you know the patterns, but then you get a kid who is good at some things and not others. It's my job to figure out how best to teach them.

When I started teaching, dyslexia had been recently quantified, with good research showing what parts of the brain good readers use and how parts of the brain kids with trouble use — and they're different.

We teachers have been saying this for years: it isn't that this kid isn't trying; they're just doing it differently.

A lot of kids have crippling anxiety, too

I remember when I was in high school, we weren't as anxious for many reasons. Today, kids are so anxious about tests. Some even avoid school. There are often bigger reasons, such as two kids I've been working with, who have both recently lost their fathers.

Social media is such a big part of anxiety. We're only just realizing how destructive social media can be for adolescents. One thing we've done at my school this year is have kids check their phones when they come in, and they don't get them back until they leave.

I'm lucky that I've never had that problem. I love reading books. I use the internet for email and some research, which is wonderful, but that's it.

The reason for my long career is that I love it

I come to work daily so happy and wonder how many people do the same.

One day, a girl who took the Regents Examination called me when she got her results. It was before cellphones. She went to the nearest phone and said, "Jerry, we got an 85!" I told her that 'we' didn't — it was all her.

I've been offered good money to go into school administration, but it's not for me. Desk work is everything I hate. I'm lucky to have been able to turn these offers down; many good teachers can't for financial reasons. I'm very privileged.

There will be a point with my health when I have to retire

Thank goodness my mind is fine, but my infrastructure is wearing out. Teaching is getting physically tougher every day. I've noticed I'm more tired by the weekend, and walking the subway stairway is getting harder.

Hopefully, it's not next year. I would like to see this one math student who I helped through her junior year graduate.

The head of the school and I talked about retiring a while ago. She said, "Jerry, you're never going to retire." We imagined students coming to my office and realizing I was still at my desk but was cold and blue and wouldn't talk to them.

When I retire, I won't do much travelling, but I would like to write about my experiences. I'd love to write about my mother, who I was very close to and who I think was interesting. This is mostly just for me, but I'd also like to share it with friends and my children.

• Business partners Mike Gorius and Kevin Hart invest in real estate in Louisville.
• Gorius, who started investing remotely, was looking for a growing but affordable market.
• Louisville has proven to be steady, avoiding extreme market fluctuations seen in other areas.

Home flippers Mike Gorius and Kevin Hart have found their sweet spot: Ranch-style houses — ideally three-bed, one-bath — in Louisville, Kentucky.

"That's probably our favorite house to do. They're just super easy to renovate, most of them are 1950 or newer, and usually there's nothing too crazy about them," Hart told Business Insider. "Once you start getting into houses that were built in the 1900s or earlier, which you see a lot of closer to downtown in West Louisville, who knows what's happened to that house over the past 100 years? You just encounter a lot of issues."

The business partners also wholesale real estate and buy and hold long-term rentals. In 2024, they did 50 transactions between wholesales, wholetails, and flips, and they own more than 20 rental properties throughout the Lousiville area. BI verified their property ownership and deal history by looking at settlement statements and closing documents.

They like their market for a few different reasons. Hart, who was born and raised in Louisville, knows the city intimately. But Gorius, who is from Massachusetts and spent years living in Phoenix, chose to invest in Kentucky's largest city from afar. He's relocating to Louisville now that their real estate company has taken off and they have three employees to manage.

Gorius, whose first deal was a duplex that he turned into a long-term rental, looked at a few key factors when considering markets to invest in.

1. Affordability. Ultimately, the reason he didn't invest in the market he was living in, Phoenix, was because of the cost.

According to the National Association of Realtors, the median sales price of existing single-family homes in the Phoenix metro area in the fourth quarter of 2024 was $476,400. In Louisville, it was $279,200.

2. Presence of major companies. "It's a hub for UPS. Ford also has a plant there — a couple of years ago, when I was looking, they had just announced that they were going to add a second plant there and that's still in the process of being built," he said. "If these massive, massive companies are willing to invest in this city then it's definitely good enough for little old me."

3. Vibe of the city. Visiting the area sealed the deal for Gorius, who enjoyed the mild weather and general vibe: "Everyone was super, super nice, just kind and saying hello and everyone was willing to help out. That's what drew me to the market."

Hart weighed in on what he likes specifically about his native city.

"We have four seasons but, at the same time, we don't have natural disasters like other places. We don't have hurricanes, we don't have wildfires, we have the occasional tornado, but that's super rare in the actual city," he said. "At the same time, we've been super insulated from all these crazy highs and lows that a lot of big cities have seen, especially over the past five, six years."

For example, "San Francisco, or really any California town, saw 40%, 50% appreciation — these crazy jumps on these properties — so that when interest rates went up two years ago, they also saw 40%, 50% drops in prices," Hart explained. Louisville, which he said saw appreciation between 10% and 14% in that same timeframe, didn't have that issue. "It's just been super steady so no one's having to jump all around for crazy deals."

That could change, he said, pointing to other markets in the south that are booming: "Austin's insane, Nashville's insane. Louisville has stayed pretty steady, but it might turn into that one day. We got a Topgolf a couple of years ago, we've had a lot of other infrastructure changes, so maybe we'll get super popular like that.

"But, at this point, it's just a good place to live, and you can still buy a house for under $250,000."

• Amazon invests billions of dollars in robots to boost e-commerce efficiency and profitability.
• Back in 2015, the Amazon Picking Challenge tried to spur more research into warehouse automation.
• The competition inspired some of the company's most advanced robots, including Sparrow and Robin.

Amazon is investing billions of dollars in robots to make its e-commerce business more efficient and profitable. This huge initiative started out a lot smaller.

A decade ago, the company launched a competition for university engineering teams called the Amazon Picking Challenge. It called on researchers to design robots for a common warehouse task: Grabbing products from a shelf and putting them in a box.

As a tech reporter, this quirky project intrigued me. At the time in early 2015, Google was testing self-driving cars, a technology that emerged from a similar academic competition known as the DARPA Grand Challenge. What if Amazon was trying to replicate this magic, but with robots rather than automobiles?

Then, a funny thing happened. The Amazon Picking Challenge faded away. It was renamed and only lasted a few years. I chalked this up to another bad call and moved on.

I only thought about this challenge again late last year. That's when Amazon unveiled a next-generation warehouse in Louisiana that has 10 times more robots moving products around and, yes, picking them up with dexterity. The facility processes orders 25% faster and 25% more efficiently, and it will likely be the future of the company's e-commerce operation.

Ten years after the Amazon Picking Challenge, the fruits of this nerdy competition have finally emerged. It follows an uncannily similar timeline to the DARPA Grand Challenge, which started in 2004 and resulted in Google's driverless cars hitting the road roughly a decade later.

So, with the help of Business Insider reporter Eugene Kim, I investigated how Amazon's huge new fleet of picking robots came to be, and how this competition laid the foundation for a new wave of automation that's about to crash over the warehouse and logistics industry.

From pallets to picking

It started with an acquisition. In 2012, Amazon paid $775 million for Kiva Systems, which designed flat robots that zip around warehouse floors. 

This helped move pallets of goods around, but humans still needed to pick items. Getting a robot to spot the correct product in a box, then grab it just hard enough to pick it up, but not damage it — that's incredibly difficult.

This is where the Amazon Picking Challenge came in. Instead of hacking away at this problem itself, the company wanted to focus the broader academic community on the task.

The risk was that any valuable inventions would be out in the public sphere, and Amazon might not directly benefit from them. But the potential gains were much bigger, according to executives and roboticists.

"Amazon doesn't compete with robotics companies," said former Amazon Robotics chief Brad Porter, who runs robotics startup Cobot now. "When facing an unsolved research problem in robotics AI like bin picking, Amazon benefits if anyone solves that problem as long as Amazon can get access to the technology to improve their operations."

"The challenge Amazon was trying to solve was how to motivate researchers to focus on this problem," Porter added. "The Picking Challenge very much succeeded in doing that."

Oreos, Sharpies, and dog toys

The first competition took place over two days in late May 2015 in Seattle, with more than 25 teams from colleges including MIT, Duke, Rutgers, and Georgia Tech.

The contestants had to design a robot that could pick products from a typical shelf found on a Kiva Systems warehouse pod, and then put those items into containers. The picker had to be fully autonomous, and each robot was given 20 minutes to pick 12 target items from the shelves. Contestants had to open-source their creations.

Companies, including ABB, Fanuc, and Rethink Robotics, founded by industry pioneer Rodney Brooks, provided hardware for contestants to repurpose and tinker with.

The products were a preselected set of 25 items commonly sold on Amazon.com, including packs of Oreo cookies, boxes of Sharpie pens, and dog toys.

Some were easier to pick. There were simple cuboids, like a box of coffee stirrers or a whiteboard eraser. Others were trickier. For instance, a box of Cheez-Its could not be removed from the bin without first tilting it, adding another complex step for the robots. Smaller items, such as an individual spark plug, were more difficult to detect and properly grasp.

Vacuum arms and 'catastrophic failure'

Among all 26 teams, a total of 36 correct items were picked, versus seven incorrect items. Another four products were dropped by robots in the competition.

About half of the teams scored zero points, and two teams couldn't get their robots working well enough to even attempt the challenge, according to a research paper analyzing the results.

Problems ranged from the highly technical to the mundane. Some of the same items came packed differently, which made them even more difficult to pick. One team's machine had a vacuum hose that got accidentally wound around the robotic arm.

With each system having hundreds of components, the failure of any one of these could lead to "catastrophic failure of the overall system — as witnessed during the competition," the researchers wrote. 

The main finding from this first Amazon Picking Challenge was that human warehouse workers were a lot better than machines at picking products.

"A human is capable of performing a more complex version of the same task at a rate of ∼400 sorts/hour with minimal errors," the researchers wrote. "While the best robot in the APC achieved a rate of ∼30 sorts/hour with a 16% failure rate."

But the conclusion was hopeful, too: The contest showed that robotics could substantially increase warehouse automation and order fulfillment in the near future.

The competition was renamed the following year as the Amazon Robotics Challenge, and the tasks evolved to be more complex.

Suction and other benefits

Tye Brady, chief technologist at Amazon Robotics, was involved in those later Amazon Robotics Challenges. 

In a recent interview with Business Insider, he said research on robotic manipulation exploded from 2016 through 2018, with many institutions publishing their results and insights. This helped spread valuable knowledge across the industry, speeding up progress. 

At least two professors started graduate-level classes related to Amazon's challenge, and these programs are still churning out experts with valuable practical applied knowledge in robotics, Brady explained. 

"When you get a whole bunch of smart people together in a room and think about focused problems, some great things are going to happen, and that's really what happened," he said. "It inspired a lot of the work that we have today that we see in, for example, our Sparrow and Robin manipulation systems that are real-world products delivering packages inside of our fulfillment centers."

In that first competition in 2015, some robotics teams used grippers that mimicked the way a human hand picks things up. Other teams tried suction instead, with some researchers even strapping off-the-shelf vacuum cleaners to their robots.

Gripping proved more problematic because the robots didn't receive enough information to know when to release or add pressure at the right times. This could result in squashed or crushed products or dropped items.

Sucking the items up so they stuck to the end of robot arms was a more successful approach.

"The idea of high flow suction was novel. Bring your favorite vacuum cleaner and start picking up objects. That was kind of clever," Brady said. "This idea, we used suction inside of our Robin and our Sparrow arms. It's very good."

The boss has noticed

Amazon unveiled Robin, its first robotic arm, in 2021. This machine picks up packages from conveyor belts and places them on other mobile robots called Pegasus.

Sparrow followed in 2023. This was Amazon's first robotic arm to handle individual items rather than packages. It uses computer vision and AI to pick more than 200 million different items from containers and place them into totes.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has taken notice. At the AWS re:Invent conference in December, he should have been talking about cloud computing. But he took time away from that subject to wax lyrical about Sparrow. 

"It has to discern which item is which. It has to know how to grasp that item, given the size of it and the materials and the flexibility of that material. And then it has to know where in the receiving bin it can put it," Jassy said. "These are all inventions that are critical to us changing the processing time and the cost to serve our customers."

Wall Street has noticed, too. Morgan Stanley recently estimated that Amazon's warehouse robots could save the company as much as $10 billion a year.

"The big story is we're just getting started," said Brady.

• The Trump administration already faces more than 85 lawsuits.
• Some lawsuits challenge President Donald Trump and Elon Musk's moves to shrink the federal government.
• Below are some lawsuits corporate America, as well as consumers, may want to keep tabs on.

President Donald Trump's executive orders and actions by his administration have already spurred more than 85 lawsuits since he was sworn into office for a second term.

A chunk of those legal challenges has emerged in response to Trump and Elon Musk's push to shrink the federal government through the work of DOGE.

Here are some high-stakes lawsuits related to the moves of the Trump administration and DOGE that corporate America, as well as consumers, may want to keep tabs on.

Lawsuit over the dismantling of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

It did not take long before the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — a federal watchdog agency designed to oversee financial institutions and protect people from scams — became a target of the Trump administration.

On February 1, Trump fired Rohit Chopra, the CFPB director under former President Joe Biden, and on February 7, Musk wrote on X, "CFPB RIP."

Shortly after, Russell Vought, the bureau's acting director, sent an email to employees ordering them to "not perform any work tasks this week." The agency's Washington, DC, headquarters was also ordered closed.

The National Treasury Employees Union and other workers' unions quickly filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration in Washington, DC, federal court, alleging that the move to "dismantle" the CFPB is unlawful since the agency was created by Congress.

US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who is overseeing the case, said in a ruling on February 14 that the Trump administration could not terminate any CFPB employee without cause. She also ordered that the defendants not "delete, destroy, remove, or impair any data or other CFPB records covered by the Federal Records Act."

In a February 24 court filing, Justice Department attorneys argued against the plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction and said that the Trump administration plans to streamline the CFPB.

Jay Kesten, a law professor at Florida State University who researches securities regulation and corporate law, called the CFPB "one of the few governmental watchdogs for our financial markets."

"In the short-term, while litigation is pending, this is very likely to disrupt the ability of consumers to hold bad-actors in the banking and credit markets to account," Kesten told BI.

Lawsuit challenging Trump's termination of DEI programs

A lawsuit brought earlier this month against the Trump administration by the city of Baltimore, Maryland, higher education groups and a restaurant workers' organization challenged Trump's executive orders targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in the federal government.

One executive order calls for federal agencies to terminate all "equity-related" grants or contracts, while another requires federal contractors and grant recipients to "certify" that they do not operate any illegal DEI programs.

The plaintiffs — which include the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, the American Association of University Professors, and the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United —argued in their lawsuit that the orders are "unconstitutionally vague."

US District Judge Adam Abelson issued a preliminary injunction on February 21 temporarily blocking the Trump administration from enforcing parts of the orders.

In his written opinion, the judge added that the plaintiffs "have shown they are unable to know which of their DEI programs (if any) violate federal anti-discrimination laws, and are highly likely to chill their own speech."

The Trump administration has moved to appeal the ruling.

Peter Woo, a California lawyer specializing in corporate diversity practices at the firm Jackson Lewis, told BI that though the case does provide some temporary reprieve at least to federal contractors and private entities that receive federal grants, the court's ruling does not prevent the Department of Justice or other federal agencies from launching a probe over DEI initiatives.

"The only thing that it blocks the AG from doing is to use the term 'illegal DEI' as the basis to conduct those investigations," Woo said.

One of Trump's executive orders encourages the private sector to end "illegal DEI discrimination and preferences." As part of that plan, the order tasks each federal agency to "identify up to nine potential civil compliance investigations" of enterprises including publicly traded corporations and large nonprofits.

The Head of the Office of Special Counsel sued the Trump administration over his termination

Hampton Dellinger, the head of an independent government watchdog agency that protects federal whistleblowers, sued the Trump administration, including US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, after he was fired through a one-sentence email this month.

In his lawsuit filed in Washington, DC, federal court, Dellinger argued that his termination from the Office of Special Counsel was unlawful and the president may only cut his five-year term short "for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office."

US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson granted a temporary restraining order on February 12, reinstating Dellinger to his post for 14 days. The case reached the Supreme Court after the Trump administration filed an emergency petition, and the court left Jackson's order in place for now.

Jackson, on February 26, extended the temporary restraining order reinstating Dellinger by three days before she rules on the motion for a preliminary injunction.

Also on February 26, Trump administration's acting solicitor general urged the Supreme Court to take up the case, arguing in part that a "fired Special Counsel" shouldn't be allowed to continue "wielding executive power."

Roderick Hills, a New York University School of Law professor, told BI that the case could be consequential for the business world. That's because, he said, it appears the Trump administration wants to use the case as a vehicle to try to get the nation's high court to overrule a 1935 legal precedent called Humphrey's Executor, which says Congress can insulate agency chiefs from presidential removal.

If that precedent — which is cited in Dellinger's lawsuit — gets overruled for all independent agencies, that means that even the Federal Reserve Board could be placed under presidential control, said Hills, who researches administrative and constitutional law.

"If the Federal Reserve Board served at the pleasure of the president, you can just imagine the chaos that Trump could reap," Hills said.

Lawsuit over DOGE's access to sensitive taxpayer data at the IRS

Following reports that DOGE was seeking broad access to sensitive taxpayer data at the Internal Revenue Service, a group of watchdog organizations and workers unions filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration. In it, they allege that DOGE's efforts to gain access to the confidential information is illegal.

The data in question includes individuals' social security numbers, income and net worth, bank account information, tax liability, deductions and charitable donations as well as confidential business information like profit and loss statements and payroll lists, the lawsuit says.

The plaintiffs — which include the advocacy groups Center for Taxpayer Rights and Main Street Alliance, along with workers' unions National Federation of Federal Employees and Communications Workers of America — argue that Congress has not granted DOGE the authority to view the data and that such sweeping access violates the Tax Reform Act, the Privacy Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act.

The White House and the Treasury Department later agreed to block DOGE's full access to the IRS's payment systems, instead granting read-only access to anonymous taxpayer data.

Kesten, the law professor at Florida State University, told BI that lawsuits involving alleged privacy violations like this one could fuel greater cybersecurity concerns within the business community.

"This may be a very novel kind of problem that they face where privacy information, data leaks, come not from hackers or other folks trying to obtain access, but coming from leaks through governmental sources," Kesten said.

Lawsuit over the Trump administration's firing of Inspectors General

In Trump's first few days in office, the Trump administration fired more than a dozen inspectors general, telling them in a two-sentence email they were being terminated because of "changing priorities."

After their termination, eight inspectors general from the departments of defense, veterans affairs, health and human services, state, education, agriculture, labor, and the Small Business Administration sued the Trump administration, arguing that their firings "violated unambiguous federal statutes" designed to protect them from "interference" in their nonpartisan oversight duties.

Inspectors general — who conduct audits, investigate reports of misconduct, and look for waste and fraud in federal agencies and government contractors — are expected to be independent of the president.

The plaintiffs also argue that the Trump administration violated the Inspector General Act of 1978 by not notifying Congress of their terminations 30 days in advance, and not giving a reason for their removal.

On February 14, US District Judge Ana Reyes, who is overseeing the case, denied the inspectors' general request to be immediately reinstated in their roles, saying that their emergency request was not necessary. The judge, however, allowed for the case to proceed, just on a slower timeline.

Joseph Slater, a law professor at the University of Toledo and an expert in labor and employment law, told BI that while this case directly involves rules specific to the federal sector, it could have downstream effects on the business world.

"The question will be how much an agency without traditional checks and with a decidedly partisan slant can abuse its authority in terms of regulating/not regulating and rewarding/punishing private sector businesses for what previously would have been seen as improper reasons," Slater said in an email.

Federal workers' unions sue over Trump administration's buyout offer

Trump and Musk's plan to root out federal employees with buyout offers was allowed to move forward.

In late January, the Trump administration gave just over 2 million government workers the chance to resign and maintain full pay and benefits until September 30. Employees originally had until February 6 to accept the buyout.

Federal workers' unions, including the American Federation of Government Employees and the National Association of Government Employees, then sued the Trump administration, arguing that the country "will suffer a dangerous one-two punch" if the federal employees "leave or are forced out en masse."

The lawsuit said that the "fork in the road" deferred resignation offer was "arbitrary," "capricious," and unlawful.

US District Judge George O'Toole Jr. of Massachusetts initially issued a temporary restraining order to extend the deadline on the offer, but ultimately ruled on February 12 that the program could proceed. The judge wrote in his order that the labor unions who sued did not have standing to bring the lawsuit because they were not "directly impacted by the directive."

In a statement to Business Insider after the judge issued his order, Everett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees called the ruling "a setback in the fight for dignity and fairness for public servants," but said, "it's not the end of that fight."

About 75,000 federal employees have accepted the buyout offer, the Trump administration has said.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.

• Few large companies appear to have the appetite to make big acquisitions in healthcare this year.
• Startups desperate to sell may find better luck with other digital health companies flush with cash.
• Here are seven healthcare startups that look poised to make more deals in 2025.

Many healthcare startups and investors are hoping for a fresh wave of M&A in 2025 after a slow few years for company combinations — and the right buyers might just be their startup peers.

At the end of 2024, many healthcare startups were quietly raising down rounds and looking around for potential buyers to extend their lifespans, Business Insider reported in November.

While some startups are desperate for deals, nearly a dozen investors and bankers told BI in February that few large companies have the appetite to make big acquisitions in healthcare this year.

"In digital health, it's not necessarily that it doesn't make sense to consolidate — it's there's a lack of consolidators out there," said Aaron DeGagne, a senior healthcare analyst at PitchBook.

But those startups could find a new home with other digital health startups that are flush with cash. Several healthcare startups have been vocal about their M&A ambitions this year as they await dropping interest rates and are eager to jump on opportunities for inorganic growth.

These are seven healthcare startups that appear ready to make more acquisitions in 2025.

Caresyntax

Founded: 2013

Last fundraise: $180 million in Series C extension and growth debt expansion funding in August 2024.

Surgical software company Caresyntax is planning on using a fresh fundraise to power acquisitions.

Caresyntax, which combines information from surgical videos, medical records, and other sources to help make surgeries safer and more profitable, grabbed $180 million in August. In a release about the funding round, the company said it was looking to make several acquisitions in 2024 and beyond.

Josh Zeidman, Caresyntax's chief business officer, told BI that the company is looking for acquisitions in areas such as surgical AI applications, video analytics, and data capture modules.

He said Caresyntax is primarily considering deals with venture-backed start-ups or other small private companies rather than with private equity or public companies.

Caresyntax said in its August release that it had acquired multiple surgical data and technology assets in 2023, though it didn't name those acquisitions. Zeidman told BI that Caresyntax's primary get in 2023 was acquihiring the team behind health data consulting company CQInsights, including its CEO Dr. Bruce Ramshaw, who became Caresyntax's chief medical informatics officer.

Commure

Founded: 2017

Last fundraise: $70 million from General Catalyst, as part of Commure's $6 billion merger with Athelas in October 2023

M&A is a core part of healthcare startup Commure's playbook.

Commure, the health software company cofounded by General Catalyst CEO Hemant Taneja, has made seven acquisitions to date. Former employees told BI in September that Commure's leadership regularly touted the slogan "M&A is in our DNA."

Most recently, the startup bought the care coordination platform Memora Health in December.

Memora Health was another General Catalyst investment, as was Athelas, the revenue cycle management company Commure merged with in 2023.

Commure also announced in July a $139 million all-cash acquisition of public medical scribing company Augmedix.

Commure didn't respond to requests for comment for this story.

Datavant

Founded: 2017

Last fundraise: Sixth Street and other investors contributed an undisclosed amount of funding in 2021 to support Datavant's $7 billion merger with Ciox Health.

Health data startup Datavant is hunting for more deals after kicking off a fresh M&A push in the fall.

The company, which has made 11 acquisitions since 2017, plans to make at least "one or two" more acquisitions in early 2025, CEO Kyle Armbrester told Business Insider in January.

Datavant manages patient data exchanges between providers, payers, and life sciences organizations. Private equity firm New Mountain Capital is Datavant's controlling shareholder.

Datavant most recently made two deals in September: it bought data privacy organization Trace Data and two data analytics products from healthcare AI startup Apixio.

Armbrester said Datavant is looking for companies building technology for healthcare providers and life sciences organizations, especially those with existing market traction.

"We're large and diversified, and I think we're in a really good space to take a smaller smarter and apply their logic or artificial intelligence or analytics across that vast network to see a lot of benefit," Armbrester said.

Flare Capital Partners' Parth Desai told Business Insider in December that he expects private-equity-backed healthcare companies to make tuck-in acquisitions in 2025 as they prepare for potential IPOs in 2026.

Hinge Health

Founded: 2014

Last fundraise: $400 million in Series E funding in October 2021

2025 could be the year that Hinge Health finally goes public. Multiple investors and bankers told Business Insider in February that the physical therapy startup is the best choice for the year's first digital health IPO, with margins more closely resembling a software company than a healthcare services provider.

Hinge Health hired banks including Morgan Stanley last year to prepare for a public market debut, hoping to go public in early 2025, BI reported in September.

Those ambitions shouldn't preclude the startup from making acquisitions. Similar to Datavant, Hinge Health could look to notch some deals before an IPO to further its growth.

CEO Daniel Perez told Business Insider in October 2023 that Hinge Health was actively looking for smaller companies to acquire, a sentiment the startup echoed to Endpoints News at the start of 2024.

The company hasn't announced any acquisitions since then.

Hinge Health declined to comment for this story.

Innovaccer

Founded: 2014

Last fundraise: $275 million in Series F funding in January 2025

Innovaccer is hoping to use a fresh mega-round to fuel acquisitions.

At the start of the year, the company announced its $275 million Series F round, a combination of primary and secondary investments from investors like B Capital Group and Kaiser Permanente.

Less than two weeks later, Innovaccer announced it had bought actuarial analytics startup Humbi AI.

Innovaccer also made two acquisitions last year, scooping up healthcare marketing platform Cured in January 2024 and pharmacy software company Pharmacy Quality Solutions that March.

The startup told Endpoints News this January that it's looking to buy more health tech companies this year. CEO Abhinav Shashank said Innovaccer is looking at companies working to enhance the patient experience, relieve administrative burdens for providers with automation, and decrease costs.

"Our acquisition strategy is to accelerate our roadmap by partnering with like-minded mission-driven companies that can help customers drive these transformations," Shashank said in a statement to BI.

Fabric

Founded: 2021

Last fundraise: $60 million in Series A funding in February 2024

Fabric, the only early-stage startup on this list, has centered M&A in its approach since its March 2023 launch. The healthcare startup said it plans to accelerate that strategy further this year.

Fabric made 4 acquisitions in 15 months, most recently buying physician practice group TeamHealth's virtual care business in September. Before that, Fabric bought the virtual care business MeMD from Walmart, asynchronous virtual care platform Zipnosis from Bright Health, and the generative AI startup Gyant.

Fabric sells software to help emergency rooms manage patients including by directing them to telehealth services where appropriate. General Catalyst led its $60 million Series A round in February 2024.

Fabric founder and CEO Aniq Rahman told BI in September that Fabric was starting to look at bigger acquisition targets.

"A lot of the companies that are struggling to go raise capital right now, or some of these larger businesses that are reevaluating their position in the market, are creating opportunities for us as well," he said. "Pretty much every week, there's inbound coming in from investors that are like, we have assets in our portfolio that may be accretive to what you're doing with Fabric."

Rahman told BI in February that Fabric expects to ramp up its M&A strategy even more in 2025.

He said Fabric has "already met with a few dozen companies this year around M&A," and is watching opportunities across venture-backed startups, private-equity-owned companies, and even spinouts of public companies.

Transcarent

Founded: 2020

Last fundraise: $126 million in Series D funding in May 2024

Transcarent, the healthcare benefits navigation startup helmed by former Livongo CEO Glen Tullman, kicked off the year with a big acquisition.

The company announced in January that it would buy fellow care navigation company Accolade from the public markets in a $621 million all-cash deal.

It's one of at least three deals Transcarent has made to date. The startup bought 98point6's virtual care tech and physician group in March 2023 and merged with surgical care startup BridgeHealth in 2020.

Transcarent's top M&A priority for 2025 is to successfully integrate Accolade into its business, CEO Glen Tullman told BI in a statement.

Still, he said the company remains strategically opportunistic and is consistently evaluating opportunities for growth and innovation.

Transcarent is backed by General Catalyst, which certainly hasn't shied away from M&A for its healthcare bets, as seen through Fabric and Commure's rich histories of acquisitions. Tullman's own investment firm, 7wireVentures, also an investor in Transcarent, has similarly combined its own portfolio companies, most recently selling mental health startup Caraway to pediatric care company Summer Health in February.

General Catalyst and 7wireVentures co-led Transcarent's $126 million Series D round in May.

Whether you want to back up the data on your PC, transfer videos from your Mac or offload a few games from your PlayStation 5, a portable SSD is a quick and easy way to expand your storage. These little bricks may cost more than traditional hard drives, but they’re significantly faster, lighter and more reliable. Figuring out the best portable SSD for you, though, isn’t as simple as just picking the one with the lowest price or the most space. (Well, it can be, but that wouldn’t be very efficient.) To help, we’ve weeded through the portable SSD market, tested a bunch of contenders and sorted out which ones offer the most value. You can find our top picks below, plus an overview of what to know before you buy.

Table of contents

• Best external SSDs for 2025

• Other external SSDs we tested

• What to consider before buying an external SSD

• How we test external SSDs

• Recent updates

Best external SSDs for 2025

Other external SSDs we tested

The pre-built OWC Express 1M2 is a premium-feeling USB4 SSD that’s roughly as fast as the ADATA SE920, but it’s larger and significantly more expensive as of this writing.

If you’re in the relatively small group with a PC that supports USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 but not Thunderbolt or USB4, the Crucial X10 Pro is essentially a faster version of our top pick. The Lexar SL600 is a larger but slightly quicker option, while the Lexar SL500, Kingston XS2000 or Samsung T9 could also work if you see them on discount. As a reminder, though, drives like these are aimed primarily at content creators and other professionals, and you have to make sure you won’t upgrade to a device with a faster USB interface anytime soon.

The Samsung T7 Shield has a conveniently rugged design with a rubberized, IP65-rated shell. It also comes with both USB-C and USB-A cables. But it was consistently slower than the X9 Pro and XS1000 in our benchmark tests, plus it has a shorter three-year warranty.

The Silicon Power PX10 is an especially affordable USB 3.2 Gen 2 model. Its peak speeds weren’t too far off the X9 Pro or XS1000 in synthetic benchmarks, but it can get distractingly hot and its sustained writes are markedly worse. It took 50 seconds longer to move our 70GB custom test folder to this drive compared to the X9 Pro, for example.

The Crucial X6 is another low-cost option that’s a good bit slower than our top picks. It’s limited to a three-year warranty and lacks an IP rating as well. It’s not a terrible option for the basics, but there’s little reason to get it over the XS1000 when their prices are similar.

The OWC Envoy Pro FX is well-built and supports Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3.2 Gen 2, but it’s a smidge slower than the SE920 and Express 1M2, and it’s much pricier than the former.

Samsung

What to consider before buying an external SSD

Capacity

The first thing to figure out before buying a portable SSD is just how much storage space you need. Most of the drives we considered for this guide are available in capacities ranging from one to four terabytes, though plenty of smaller and larger options exist.

There’s no hard-and-fast rule for which size is “best” — that’ll ultimately depend on your budget and what exactly you’re looking to stash. But in general, it’s better to overcompensate than underdo it. Nobody wants to be forced into buying a second drive because they filled the first one up too quickly. If you’re backing up a PC, a good rule of thumb is to buy an external SSD with twice as much space as your computer’s internal storage. This way, you can save at least one full backup while also having room for additional data. If you want to store a bunch of PlayStation or Xbox games with huge install sizes, you may need more space. If you just want to back up a small collection of files, you may be better off saving your cash and just getting a smaller USB flash drive instead, which aren’t quite the same as the external SSDs we tested for this guide.

Price

In general, you get a better price-per-gigabyte ratio the further you go up the capacity ladder. As of this writing, the 1TB Samsung T9 is priced at $130, or $0.13 per gigabyte (GB), while the 4TB version is available for $297 or $0.07 per GB. That technically makes the larger model a better “value,” but not everyone needs to pay that much more upfront.

SSDs in the same speed class tend to not vary too wildly in terms of performance, so part of our decision-making for this guide came down to which ones are often the cheapest. But prices can fluctuate over time; if you see that one of our top picks is priced way higher than a comparable honorable mention, feel free to get the latter. At this point in time, costs are broadly trending upwards.

Photo by Jeff Dunn / Engadget

Speed and USB interface

Just about all external SSDs are significantly faster than mechanical hard disk drives (HDDs), so you’ll save time waiting for files to transfer and games to load no matter what. Within the market, however, there are distinct performance tiers. These are defined in large part by the USB interface a drive supports. While all of the SSDs we considered for this guide can connect over USB-C, some USB-C connections can supply faster transfer speeds than others. Sorting through this can get real confusing real fast, so we’ll try to put it in simple terms.

You can essentially divide today’s crop of portable SSDs into different segments. At the very top are drives that utilize the (relatively) new Thunderbolt 5 standard, which has a theoretical maximum transfer rate of 80 gigabits per second (Gbps). (You may see it advertise speeds up to 120 Gbps, but that boost doesn’t apply to storage devices.) But portable SSDs that support this tech only just started to trickle out toward the end of 2024, and the market for devices with Thunderbolt 5 ports is still fairly limited, with the most notable exceptions being Apple’s top-end Macs with a M4 Pro or M4 Max chip.

Thunderbolt 5 is built on a spec called USB4, which can technically reach up to 80 Gbps as well but is more typically available in a flavor that tops out at 40 Gbps. Portable SSDs based on that standard started to roll out toward the end of 2023 but are still relatively infrequent. The older Thunderbolt 3 and Thunderbolt 4, which other high-end external SSDs continue to use, support the same 40 Gbps maximum.

A third version of USB4, meanwhile, maxes at 20 Gbps, as does an older yet more frequently used standard called USB 3.2 Gen 2x2. Below that is USB 3.2 Gen 2, which maxes at 10 Gbps. Then there’s USB 3.2 Gen 1, which is capped at 5 Gbps. Lastly, we’ll bundle together SSDs that use older standards and aren’t worth considering here.

To make this easy: For everyday folks, a good USB 3.2 Gen 2 drive is the sweet spot between fast-enough performance, wide-enough compatibility and cheap-enough price, so those make up our primary recommendations above. If you work in a creative field or don’t mind paying extra to shave seconds off your large file transfers, though, a “higher-tier” model would make sense. However, note that actual computers that utilize USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 aren’t super common — no Mac supports it, for one — and the interface is effectively being replaced by USB4.

In general, your chain is only as strong as its weakest link: If your computer only has USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports, for example, you could still use a Thunderbolt SSD, but you won’t get beyond Gen 2 speeds. Make sure you know what you’re working with before you buy.

As a refresher, storage devices are broadly measured in terms of read and write speeds. The former refers to how long it takes to access something from the drive; the latter, how long it takes to save something to it. From there, you can break these metrics into sequential and random performance. Sequential speeds tend to matter more with portable SSDs, since most people use them to save or access long, constant streams of data such as a bunch of high-res photos. Random speeds would be important if you want to run video games off the drive, since that’d involve reading and writing smaller, more scattered files. Either way, how well an SSD can sustain its performance with extended use is also critical.

Other performance factors and enclosures

A modern portable SSD’s speeds aren’t just about its USB interface, though. Its performance can also depend on how advanced its controller is, whether it has a native USB flash controller or a separate bridge chip to communicate with a host device, the kind and quality of NAND flash memory it uses, whether it has a DRAM cache or it’s DRAM-less, and more.

We’re simplifying things, but here are some quick tips: Drives with triple-level cell (TLC) memory aren’t as cheap as quad-level cell (QLC) SSDs, but they’re generally more reliable and they offer better write performance. Having a dedicated DRAM cache helps if you plan to hit your drive with more intense, sustained workloads, but may not be worth the extra cost for most people. Some models with native flash controllers may not perform as well as those with a bridging chip, depending on the SSD inside, but they typically draw less heat and are physically smaller. All of this is to say that an external SSD’s speeds aren’t quite as straightforward as what the manufacturer chooses to advertise on the box.

It’s also worth remembering that you can turn an internal SSD into a portable solution with a good enclosure. If you have a spare drive and don’t mind going the DIY route, this can be a cheaper and more flexible solution, though we’ve stuck to pre-built models for this guide for the sake of simplicity.

Photo by Jeff Dunn / Engadget

Size, durability, endurance and warranty

Most portable SSDs are impressively small and light, so they won’t be difficult to tuck in a bag (or even a pocket) and take on the go. We note above if any drive is bulkier than usual.

Nothing we’re talking about matters if your drive can’t last in the long term. It’s hard to definitively say which external SSDs are the most reliable, but we scoured through user reviews and feedback while researching this guide to ensure none of our picks show a pattern of catastrophic errors. If there was too much smoke around a particular model, we steered clear. We ruled out certain drives from SanDisk and Western Digital, for instance, after reports from Ars Technica and The Verge noted an issue that led to data loss (and lawsuits) in 2023.

That said, one of the big reasons you’d buy an SSD in general is its superior durability. Because it has no moving mechanical parts inside, an SSD has far fewer avenues to failure than an external hard drive. You still don’t want to be careless with them, but an accidental drop shouldn’t be the end of the world.

Some portable SSDs build on this inherent ruggedness with plastic or rubberized casings and more robust waterproofing. These aren’t necessary for everyone, but if you’re a frequent traveler or someone who often works outdoors, there are options for you.

Still, all drives can fail. If you have any sort of data you’d be distraught to lose, you should back it up regularly, then make a second backup, ideally with a cloud service. Along those protective lines, we also took note of the warranty policy for each drive we tested. Just about all of them are backed for either three or five years; of course, longer is better.

Encryption and software

It’s not uncommon to store sensitive data on a portable SSD, so some models offer extra security features like hardware-based encryption — i.e., direct scrambling of data stored on the drive itself — built-in keypads and fingerprint readers to protect against unauthorized access if the drive is lost or stolen. While not top requirements, perks like these are certainly good to have. Some SSDs also come with companion software to further manage the drive. The best of those can be handy to have around, but we wouldn’t call them essential.

How we test external SSDs

Unfortunately, we did not have access to a device that can make full use of USB 3.2 Gen 2, USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 and Thunderbolt/USB4 speeds interchangeably, so we had to split our testing across multiple devices, including an M1 Pro MacBook Pro and an Alienware gaming PC running Windows 11. Because of this, we primarily compared the portable SSDs within each “class” against one another. Before switching OSes, we reformatted each drive to each platform’s standard file system format: APFS for macOS and NTFS for Windows.

After researching which SSDs had enough positive feedback to be worth testing in the first place, we put 13 drives through a range of synthetic and “real-world” benchmark tests. On Windows, these included CrystalDiskMark, PCMark 10’s Data Drive Benchmark and 3DMark’s gaming-focused Storage Benchmark. On macOS, we used AmorphousDiskMark (effectively a Mac version of CrystalDiskMark), BlackMagic Disk Speed Test and ATTO Disk Benchmark.

We also timed how long it took for each drive to read and write a custom 70GB folder filled with roughly 11,500 different files, including photos, videos, music files, PDFs and other large and small data types scattered across numerous subfolders. We performed multiple passes for each test to avoid irregularities, and we kept track of each SSD’s heat levels over the course of the whole suite. Our process wasn't a perfect science, but it gave us a general sense of how each drive compares to other models in its price and performance range.

Recent updates

February 2025: We’ve checked to ensure the pricing info and links in this guide are still accurate. We’ve also added details on the (relatively) new Thunderbolt 5 interface, which has been implemented in a couple recent portable SSDs like the OWC Envoy Ultra and LaCie Rugged SSD Pro5. We’ll look to include testing notes for those for our next update, as they should be faster than the ADATA SE920, our current premium pick, albeit for a much higher price. For now, though, our top picks remain the same.

October 2024: We’ve taken a sweep through this guide to ensure all pricing and availability info is still correct. Our recommendations are unchanged.

Chris Eubank Jr and Conor Benn will clash in London, more than 30 years after their fathers last fought

The midfielder usually marks scoring a goal by spinning around with his arms outstretched like a helicopter