The LaCie Portable SSD is a light, easy to carry drive with a sleek, modern design. This compact portable SSD features the latest USB-C connectivity with impressive quoted transfer rates. It also makes a fantastic travel companion, being only 82g and 9mm thick, and drop-resistant of up to 2 meters. The LaCie is available in 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB capacities.
The LaCie Portable SSD is a light, easy to carry drive with a sleek, modern design. This compact portable SSD features the latest USB-C connectivity with impressive quoted transfer rates. It also makes a fantastic travel companion, being only 82g and 9mm thick, and drop-resistant of up to 2 meters. The LaCie is available in 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB capacities.
For users that need a way to store media such as high-res photos or videos, or just backup their files, LaCie offers this small and stylish SSD. With quoted speeds up to 540MB/s, the LaCie Portable SSD should allow users to transfer an hour of video footage in under a minute, edit multiple streams of a 4K video, and traverse multiple Adobe applications simultaneously (the drive comes with a free month of Adobe Creative Cloud). The SSD comes with LaCie Toolkit for easy, customizable backup.
Backed by a three-year limited warranty, the LaCie Portable SSD starts at about $115. In this review we took a look at the 2TB capacity.
LaCie Portable SSD Specifications
| Capacity | 500GB, 1TB, 2TB |
| Dimensions (W x D x L) | 79 × 9.1 × 93.5 mm (3.11 × 0.358 × 3.681 in.) |
| Weight | 0.22 lb / 0.1 kg |
| Interface | USB-C, USB-A |
| System Requirements | Computer with a USB-C, USB 3.0, or USB 2.0 port Latest version of Mac OS X 10.12 or later / Windows 7 or later Minimum free disk space: 600MB recommended |
| Warranty | 3 years |
Design and Build
The LaCie Portable SSD is a small, lightweight drive with a beautiful charcoal black finish with red trim accent. The drive sports a shock resistant design, with claims to be protected from a 2 meter (or 6.5 ft) drop. Being only 82g and 9mm thick, the portable SSD can easy fit into a pocket or travel bag, making it a great companion for traveling.
Looking at the SSD, you’ll find the LaCie branding on the slightly elevated top. On the front, you’ll find the USB-C connector, which is also compatible with USB 3.0.
Turned over, you’ll see the standard information such as the serial and model numbers.
Performance
To test the performance of the LaCie Portable SSD, we will cover two different areas of analysis: the BlackMagic disk speed test and 2MB sequential and random transfer speeds.
For the BlackMagic disk speed test, we will be comparing the drive to the Kingston HyperX SavageEXO 480GB, Seagate Fast SSD, and Samsung Portable SSD T5.
We tested the drives using a 2018 MacBook Air running the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test. The LaCie 2TB drive was the top performer with a write speed of 463.1MB/s and a read speed of 506.8MB/s. The Kingston HyperX SavageEXO fell a bit behind with a write speed of 448.8MB/s and a read speed of 483.3MB/s. The T5 hit 490.5MB/s read and 460.4MB/s write. And the fast his 511.4MB/s read and 473.3MB/s write.
Moving on to the 2MB sequential and random transfer speed tests, we used the HP Z2 mini workstation for testing, and compared the LaCie Portable SSD to a few other portable SSDs:
When looking at its 2MB sequential, the LaCie showed speeds of 405.979MB/s read and 387.916MB/s write, putting it ahead of the Kingston, which showed 366.451MB/s read and 170.500MB/s write. However, up against the Seagate Fast and the Samsung T5, the LaCie fell short, but not by any significant number. The Seagate Fast posted speeds of 407.218MB/s read and 394.680MB/s write, and the Samsung T5 with speeds of 426.62MB/s read and 406.39MB/s write.
Moving on to 2MB random performance, the LaCie showed speeds of 390.795MB/s read and 373.516MB/s write, once again putting it ahead of the Kingston with speeds of 351.887MB/s read and 226.956MB/s write. The LaCie placed the same in 2MB random as it did with 2MB sequential, with the exception of toping the Seagate Fast in write speeds, which had 294.4457MB/s.
In Random 4K performance, the LaCie took first place 5,775.893 IOPS read and 9960.013 IOPS write. The Fast showed scores of 5490.642 IOPS read and 9,836.677 IOPS write. The Kingston fell behind again with 5,409.207 IOPS read and 9,219.633 IOPS write. The T5 wasn't tested in 4K performance.
Conclusion
The LaCie Portable SSD is a significantly fast SSD that features USB-C connectivity and sports a beautiful charcoal black and orange design. The SSD is lightweight and small, making it an easy companion when traveling, and comes in 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB capacities. The compact drive is ideal for users that have multimedia files that take up a lot of space, need backup, or want to collaborate by moving larger files to the drive and sharing in that manner.
On the performance side of things, the LaCie took the top of the charts in Random 4K performance with an impressive 5,775.893 IOPS read and 9,960.013 IOPS write. On our 2MB sequential and random tests, the LaCie took third each time, but not without making the competition sweat a little. The dirve saw 2MB sequential speeds of 406MB/s read and 388MB/s write and random speeds of 390.8MB/s read and 373.5MB/s write. In our BlackMagic tests the drive hit a write speed of 463.1MB/s and a read speed of 506.8MB/s.
At the end of the day, the performance, beautiful design, and 2TB capacity of the LaCie Portable SSD will be more than enough to make the majority of their target prosumers happy.
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