Rather than sharply angular corners and edges of the now discontinued LaCie Mobile SSD, the compact Portable SSD has smoothly round corners – perhaps following Apple’s recent fetish for rounded corners on icons in Big Sur and Monterey. Available with 500GB, 1TB or 2TB of storage, the Portable SSD has a new design compared to its predecessor. The LaCie Portable SSD is an option for people who don’t need James Bond levels of security. We actually recorded read and write speeds of 520MB/s and 460MB/s respectively, but that’s still far faster than a conventional hard drive, and makes the Mobile SSD a good backup option for people who work outdoors a lot and need a really rugged backup drive that won’t cost them a fortune. The low price means that the Mobile SSD isn’t the fastest SSD you can buy, with Western Digital quoting a top speed of 560MB/s. The drive has a single USB-C interface, but there are cables for both USB-C Macs and older Macs that only have USB-A.
Reflecting G-Tech’s background in the Mac market, the Mobile SSD arrives already formatted for Macs straight out of the box (with a small partition set aside with some utilities and instructions for Windows users who may need to reformat the drive and share files with a Mac). It’s well suited to life on the road too, as the sturdy drive is rated IP67 for water and dust-resistance, and can withstand 1000lbs of pressure or drops from a height of three metres. The drive measures just 14.5mm thick, 50mm wide and 94mm long, and weighs a mere 86g, so it’s easy to slip it into your pocket or into a bag alongside a MacBook when you’re travelling. The Mobile SSD is well designed, though, despite its low price. The G-Drive Mobile SSD is very much intended as an affordable portable drive, with prices starting at just $139.99/£68.99 for a model with 500GB storage, although the 1TB and 2TB models are quite a bit more expensive. Some of G-Tech’s high-end G-Drive products were handed over to SanDisk following that takeover, but there are still a few products, such as the G-Drive Mobile SSD, that are still sold under the G-Tech brand name. Western Digital has been busy hovering up rival storage manufacturers in recent years, including both SanDisk and G-Technology (traditionally known as just G-Tech to its many Mac-using customers). Samsung quotes read and write speeds of 1,000MB/s, but our tests with the Blackmagic disk tool actually recorded a read speed of 1,780MB/s, and a write speed of 1,300MB/s, which makes the T7 Shield a great back-up option for people who need to work outdoors with their laptop. The T7 Shield is rated IP65 for water-and dust-resistance, and Samsung claims that the shock-resistant rubber sleeve can survive drops from a height of three metres. Even so, it’s still small enough to slip into a jacket pocket or backpack with no trouble at all, and many people will appreciate the extra protection that it offers. The rugged protective sleeve means that it’s a little larger than the other T7 models, measuring 0.5in/13mm thick, 2.3in/59mm wide and 3.4in/88mm long, and weighing 3.4oz/98g. It has a USB-C interface for connecting to your Mac, but Samsung includes a USB-C cable and a USB-A adaptor, so that you can use it with older Macs that have USB-A.
Both of those models can use Samsung’s Portable SSD app to add password protection for your files, but there’s also a third model called the T7 Touch that has a built-in fingerprint sensor for extra security and convenience.Īvailable in black, blue or silver, the T7 Shield costs $159/£128 with 1TB of storage, or $289.99/£219 with 2TB. We tested the T7 Shield, which is a more rugged model, wrapped in a sturdy rubber sleeve designed for outdoor use. The standard T7 is a compact, lightweight SSD that looks very similar to the old T5 – although it boasts higher performance, so make sure you check the model numbers before buying. There are actually three versions of the T7 available. The T5 is still available if you’re looking for an affordable SSD for your Mac, but Samsung recently updated its range of storage products with the new T7 model. Samsung’s T5 has been a regular fixture in our list of the best SSD drives for a few years now.