LaCie Portable SSD - STHK500800 product reviews

Solid-State Drives - aka SSD's - are undeniably the future of portable storage. They are far less prone to internal damage from being dropped when carried - at worst, all you get is cosmetic damage to the case which doesn't impact the performance. They are far less power-hungry - it takes a lot less juice to read and write to them because there are no wasteful motors. Faster by far - again, no moving parts so no waiting for bits to line up before your data is flowing in either direction. They also generate a lot less heat - almost none in fact - and no detectable noise either.

However, the cases they have been stuck in have been bulky and blocky, or oddly shaped. Until now.

This sleek, beautiful bit of kit is something to hold, and behold. Light, thin, sleek, with some stylish accenting around the edges of the sleek black case make it as adorable to look at as it is amazing to use. This was the first time I can honestly say "I'd gladly use this in public and not feel somewhat obligated to hide it under a napkin or something" - not that form rules over function for me. I do like to use kit that will spark a conversational gambit from someone though... and that's exactly what happened when I took this out for walkies one day recently.

Sitting in a booth at a local McDonald's, shamelessly leeching off their free WiFi so I could catch up on some spreadsheet work, with this sitting beside my laptop. A guy sitting in the booth opposite asked me if it was a WiFi unit - he thought it looked so sleek and stylish it simply had to be something like that. When I told him it was my data drive, he didn't believe me. "It's not making any noise! How can that be a hard drive?" When I explained that it wasn't, in fact, such a relic as that and it was the latest SSD unit from LaCie, he admitted he was impressed, thanked me, and started to search for where he could buy one.

That's where some of the shine fell off, alas. These are so good, they are nearly impossible to find at the moment! None of the bigger retailers in NZ seem to have any in stock. Even hunting on PriceSpy gave no sign of there being any stock available in NZ at the moment. [UPDATE: In fact, if you google the model number, the only listing is this review!] That tells me right away that these units are sheer gold - rubbish is easy to find, but the real gems get snapped up as fast as they can be shipped in.

Now, I don't do much video editing, so the features that really make this unit shine aren't in my wheelhouse, however I do a lot of work on large photoshop files - anything up to 5GB per file, so this drive would have to work hard to keep up... and it did. The speeds I got during the read/write tests were so close to the 'ideal lab test' specs it's not worth going into the details. Suffice it to say, this unit is blazing fast on USB 3.0, and pretty much max's out the USB 2.0 specs entirely. I was impressed at how well it performed, and it fits so snuggly into a pocket in my laptop case I can easily see a larger-storage version sitting in there... if I can get my hands on one any time. (I tested the 500GB version, but they can be found with up to 2TB, and there's no doubt in my mind that we'll soon see similar units with far more room in them.)

Overall, I'd love to give this 10/10 across the board, but without knowing what the current market price is, I can't. All I can say is that SSDs are not as cheap as hard drives or the same storage sizes, and that impacts their value... until you take into account how the durability means they aren't anywhere near as likely to need replacing after a drop. With cloud storage becoming a very mature, and almost universally-accessible option, these units will find their strengths being in 'day to day storage' and less in terms of 'long-term backup'. At least, that is the case for me and you'll need to assess your own needs as to what is a balanced solution for you.