Page 10 - Conclusion
For $140 at press time, the LaCie Mobile SSD 500GB is priced as a premium product. But the LaCie Mobile SSD 500GB is not only priced as a premium product; this is legitimately a premium product. The diamond cut enclosure is attractive to look at for the design and quality-conscious Apple crowd, and its aluminum construction feels solid and flexes to nothing. The space gray matte finish combined with its sleek and thin design is just too appropriate for Mac users. On the performance side of things, this external solid state drive maxes out its internal Seagate BarraCuda SSD's Serial ATA bandwidth over its USB 3.1 Gen 2 external interface, where we were able to achieve nearly 570MB/s for read and 532MB/s for write. These results are no doubt impressive. One thing to point out, I have read reports from people benchmarking this drive complaining they were unable to achieve the advertised speeds. The reason why they could not achieve the advertised speeds is because they are not testing it on a USB 3.1 Gen 2 port. The USB interface has considerable signaling overhead, and despite the fact USB 3.1 Gen 1 should theoretically not be a bottleneck, the reality is you are going to top out around 460MB/s. I was able to replicate the results of the benchmarks claiming they were unable to reach the advertised speeds by simply using a USB 3.1 Gen 1 instead of a USB 3.1 Gen 2 port. So there you have it. Performance aside, the LaCie Mobile SSD 500GB comes with both USB Type-C to USB Type-A and USB Type-C to USB Type-C cables for maximum compatibility and features an industry-leading 3-year warranty with data recovery service. Sure, an average 500GB external SSD is only $80 to $90, but in the same way you cannot compare two houses purely on square footage, you cannot compare the LaCie Mobile SSD 500GB against a run-of-the-mill drive. The LaCie Mobile SSD 500GB is like a show home on the west side of town: A premium product with the design, quality, performance, and warranty to back it up.
LaCie provided this product to APH Networks for the purpose of evaluation.
APH Review Focus Summary:
8/10 means Definitely a very good product with drawbacks that are not likely going to matter to the end user.
-- Final APH Numeric Rating is 8.0/10
Please note that the APH Numeric Rating system is based off our proprietary guidelines in the Review Focus, and should not be compared to other sites.
The LaCie Mobile SSD 500GB is a premium external solid state drive for Mac users with an outstanding design, quality, performance, and warranty.
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Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. A Closer Look, Test System
3. Benchmark: AIDA64 Disk Benchmark
4. Benchmark: ATTO Disk Benchmark
5. Benchmark: Crystal Disk Mark 6.0
6. Benchmark: HD Tach 3.0.1.0
7. Benchmark: HD Tune Pro 5.70
8. Conclusion
