Is that power consumption going to actually reflect in any meaningful way? I mean, I feel people jump to conclusions but the power consumption we could absolutely agree on: SSD consumes more than flash,
but more like a 5x increase (if that) - but still, what does that mean for a practical use?
To cite a specific example, the Samsung SSD T5 is rated at the following:
The 500GB variant idles at around 0.38W and has a peak power consumption of 3.43W.
Well, for one, it means 3 watts less power charging your cell phone since they're all sharing the same USB ports.... Even on a high-end hub device the tesla port itself is only supplying about 12 watts total per port- eating up almost 1/3rd of it at peak draw to run the SSD means only 2/3rds left to charge your phone... versus using a USB key where
max consumption will be about 1/10th of that 3.43 W.
On top of that many are using things like inexpensive USB hubs to add ports, those usually only supply ~900ma total current so you're talking 900ma at 5v, or a mere 4.5 watts
total available... If your SSD is eating 3.43 watts of that it doesn't leave hardly anything for your phone.
Now if you're running your stuff off a 12v connection you've got a ton of power, but the vast majority of Model 3 owners are just using the much lower power the USB ports put out for this stuff.
So running this for an hour in the car is going to drain how much...?
Why only an hour? When discussing write endurance we were using 9-10 hours a day as the example case- 8 hours in sentry at work, 1-2 hours for other driving to/from/etc
It's not going to be a ton of course, roughly 1 kwh per month.... or about 16% of the total capacity of a Model 3 battery per year. Still, a USB key would be 1.6% instead over a year. (both at peak draw, real life will be lower for both, but comparably lower for both so the ratio should remain)
Still, this is just an example of a way in which the SSD is measurably "worse" without offering anything
better in exchange.
I've experienced my sandisk USB get quite warm after the day.
Can't speak to sandisk, but the Samsung one I mentioned both advertises as specifically for hot environments, but also doesn't itself ever get especially warm, let alone hot, in use in my Tesla.
It's also virtually invisible should someone break in being both super tiny and matching the black interior... versus a much larger and more obvious SSD.
I have all my music on USB and don't want to use two usb/thumb drives, which ultimately is what's moving me to SSD.
Well, as I say I already had another Samsung 256GB drive with my music collection on it for months before the dashcam feature came along...so it didn't make much sense to get a super large device to add the camera recording WITH music instead of just keep using what I had and get a 128GB for the camera.
I do find some other upsides to using 2 keys though- I can take the music key out to update my music collection while still leaving the dashcam stuff working fine if it takes me a couple days to get that done....
Ditto if I'm travelling other than by car (like flying someplace and renting when I get there) I can take the music key with me without losing the dashcam feature on the Tesla for sentry or if my wife needs to drive it while I'm gone.
