Angelbird SSD2go pocket 512GB

Billed as the fastest portable solid-state drive with TRIM support for Macs

Austrian outfit Angelbird builds, tests and inspect its hardware by hand – and it shows. The pocket may not be as small or as light as some SSDs, but its anodised aluminium enclosure feels as if it could take a whack or two. It also plumps for a full-size USB 3.0 port as its solo connector.

Angelbird’s main claim to fame is its drives’ out-of-the-box Mac TRIM support (TRIM minimises the performance degradation over time of SSDs by optimising a drive’s garbage collection process) – a system-level command only officially supported by Applebranded SSDs.

Yet the pocket’s performance fully supports this claim. Our sequential read speeds peaked at 440.1MB/sec and writes hit 385.4MB/sec, while averages for both hit 439.9MB/sec and 379.3MB/ sec respectively. Even in the submegabyte random transfer tests, the drive averaged 144.7MB/sec reads and 208.4MB/sec writes.

Those numbers are as fast as anything we’ve seen over USB – even Transcend’s ESD400 has a tough time keeping up ( MF276). The latter however is £100 cheaper, proving that in the realm of SSDs, first place still comes at a premium. Tim Hardwick

Ridiculously fast and exceptionally designed, the SSD2go pocket more than makes up for its price tag.

The blisteringly fast SSD2go pocket is available in a range of cool colours.