LaCie, Seagate’s premium brand, today announced the launch of the new LaCie Portable SSD, a palm-sized storage device with up to 2TB of storage space.
The new portable SSD is one of LaCie’s smallest and lightest SSD options, with the 1TB model measuring about three and a half inches tall and just under three inches wide. It’s pocketable at about 1/4 inch thick, and it easily fits into a bag or backpack without taking up too much space.
LaCie says this drive is suitable for on-the-go use with a drop resistance of up to two meters. We dropped it from a two-meter height onto a wooden floor a few times to test LaCie’s claims, and the SSD suffered no damage.
The SSD is made from a black plastic material topped with a red-rimmed black metal plate that catches the light and looks quite attractive. The top of the drive has seamless LaCie branding and a white LED on the front that comes on when plugged into a computer. The LEDs are a bit brighter in a dim room, but it’s not a dealbreaker.
LaCie offers portable SSD drives in 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB capacities, so there are a total of three models at three price points. 500GB of storage costs $125, 1TB of storage costs $270, and 2TB of storage costs $540.
LaCie says the portable SSD features USB 3.1 Gen 2 with peak read/write speeds of up to 540/500MB/s, which isn’t far off from what LaCie saw in our tests for the 1TB review unit. Evaluation before product launch.
Using a Blackmagic Disk Speed Test with a 2016 MacBook Pro, read speeds for us peaked at 524MB/s, while write speeds peaked at 485MB/s. We didn’t see LaCie’s maximum speed with the 1TB model, but it was still fast.
Transferring 45GB of photos from the MacBook Pro to the LaCie drive took about four minutes, and LaCie says you can transfer an hour of 4K 30fps footage (aka 30GBs) to the drive in about a minute. We didn’t see transfer speeds that fast, however, on the 1TB model, but it wasn’t far off.
Transfer speeds will vary, of course, based on the other peripherals you may plug-in to your Mac and your Mac’s overall workload. During testing, the portable SSD stayed cool, warming up slightly when transferring large numbers of files.
The LaCie Portable SSD comes with a USB-C to USB-C cable to connect Apple’s USB-C accessories to a Mac with a USB-C port and a USB-C to USB-A port to a Mac. sends for USB-A port, so it’s compatible with both. You won’t get USB 3.1 Gen 2 speeds with USB-A ports though, so be aware of that.
The drive is formatted in exFAT, so it’s compatible with both Mac and Windows machines, but it can be reformatted using the Disk Utility feature in macOS. It comes equipped with a link to download the LaCie Toolkit software for registration and device management.
LaCie’s software is designed to sync files between mirrored folders on your computer and the portable SSD, and doesn’t require it.
LaCie’s drives come with a three-year warranty and a three-year Seagate Rescue Data Recovery Plan that offers data recovery in the event of a drive failure.
last row
If you need ultraportable storage for uploading and saving content on the go, LaCie’s new portable SSD is worth checking out thanks to its small size, durability, and fast transfer speeds. It’s pricier than some of the other options you can find on Amazon, but it comes with a three-year warranty, which is worth considering.
how to buy
The LaCie Portable SSD will be available for purchase starting this month from third-party resellers such as Best Buy, Adorama, B&H Photo, and more. 500GB of storage is available for $125, 1TB of storage is available for $270, and 2TB of storage is available for $540.
Note: LaCie provided MacRumors with a 1TB portable SSD for the purpose of this review. No other compensation was received.
