Today at CES, Seagate Technology’s premium brand, LaCie, announced two new products, the Chromé Desktop Storage and a new line of Porsche designed drives. The new Porsche designed drives feature USB-C connectivity and up to 8TB of capacity. The Chromé was designed by Neil Poulton, also has USB-C connectivity, and claims to be the fastest USB device on the market.
Today at CES, Seagate Technology’s premium brand, LaCie, announced two new products, the Chromé Desktop Storage and a new line of Porsche designed drives. The new Porsche designed drives feature USB-C connectivity and up to 8TB of capacity. The Chromé was designed by Neil Poulton, also has USB-C connectivity, and claims to be the fastest USB device on the market.
LaCie has been working with Porsche Design since 2003. The idea is to deliver beautiful products with “flawless functionality.” The latest joint project brings USB-C connectivity to its new mobile and desktop drives. USB-C is reversible so there is no wrong way to plug in the devices. There is also an adapter to make the drives USB 3.0 Type-A compatible. The drives them selves are all-aluminum enclosed that look right at home next to a current generation MacBook. The mobile drives come in 1TB, 2TB and 4TB capacities while the desktop drives come in 4TB, 5TB and 8TB capacities.
One interesting standout feature of the desktop drives is that they can be used to charge a laptop that is connected to it. The drive has to be plugged into an outlet, but users can access the drive and charge their laptop simultaneously. This features seems almost custom made for Apple’s new 12” MacBook that only has the one port.
The LaCie Chromé Desktop Storage was designed by the acclaimed industrial designer Neil Poulton. The Chromé server not so much as an external hard drive as a functional piece of art. Created as an homage to the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncuși, specifically for his 1935 bronze sculptor known as Le Coq, the enclosure is hand assembled before being chromed to a mirror polish. The enclosure itself is all-aluminum making it both lightweight and sturdy while being able to dissipate heat. The stand is chromed zinc and connects to the enclosure with neodymium magnets.
Aside from its design, the Chromé comes with 1TB of capacity through two 500GB M.2 SATA SSDs. The drives are configured in RAID0 to deliver speeds up to 940MB/s. This type of speed could ingest two hours of 4K GoPro footage in just over a minute. This device also comes with a USB-C connector.
Availability and pricing
The LaCie Porsche Designed drives are expected to be available in March and will start at $109.95 for the 1TB mobile drive and $209.95 for the 4TB desktop drive. The LaCie Chromé is expected to be available this quarter with a suggested retail price of $1,100.00.
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