Lacie Mobile Drive USB-C 5TB
Spacious property
Take it all with you on this portable drive
A stylish drive for all your portable storage needs
“Like an airy loft or vast landscape,” explains Lacie’s marketing blurb, no doubt waving its hands as befits a company headquartered in Paris. It goes on: ‘Lacie Mobile Drive articulates the beauty and importance of premium space’. Does it? None of our usual tests could confirm, though its chamfered aluminium case is undeniably pretty, and an attractive companion to any metallic laptop.
This is a portable hard drive, meaning you can connect it to your PC or Mac with a USB cable and it works without a separate power supply. Exactly how portable depends on what capacity you choose: the 4 and 5TB models come in a bulkier case than the 1 and 2TB. All but the 1TB are available in a darker Space Grey finish as well as the default Moon Silver, but this costs extra. How much extra depends on which model you choose and where you buy it.
In fact, it’s well worth shopping around, whichever variety you want. We found John Lewis had the lowest price of all, at £60 for 1TB ( www.snipca. com/35555), while Amazon had good deals on Moon Silver options, but Jigsaw was cheaper for Space Grey (£120 for 4TB from www.snipca.com/35556).
Hard drives are never going to be as fast as SSDS, so the reason to choose one is to get more capacity for your money. The 5TB Lacie Mobile Drive managed 152 megabytes per second (MB/S) reading and 138MB/S writing in our file-transfer tests, beating the WD My Passport (£119 for 5TB from Amazon www.snipca. com/35559) and closely matching the Seagate Backup Plus (£105 for 5TB from Currys Business www.snipca.com/35558, see our review, Issue 553, page 24).
Lacie is owned these days by Seagate, so similarities are by no means unexpected. The drives are roughly similar in size, too, but – despite its claim to be ‘lightweight but solid’ – Lacie’s unit is heavier, at 400g (versus 265g). The 1 and 2TB versions weigh half as much, compared to just 159g for Seagate’s lower-capacity Slim drives.
Unlike the Backup Plus, however, the Lacie Mobile Drive has a more modern USB-C interface and comes with both USB-A and USB-C cables. This has no impact on speed – the data rates above are well within the capacity of USB 3.0 Gen1, as supported by the lowliest USB-A connection – but is neater, especially if your PC or Mac has USB-C. If that and, er, ‘airiness’ appeal to you, it might be worth the extra.
SPECIFICATIONS
Portable hard drive • 1TB to 5TB capacity • USB-C interface • USB-C and USB-A cables • Optional backup software requires Windows 10 or macos 10.12 Sierra or later • 124x91x200mm (HXWXD)
• 400g • Two-year warranty www.snipca.com/35557
VERDICT You can get the capacity and performance for less, but this metalcased drive is a bit nicer for a bit extra
★★★★ ★
ALTERNATIVE Seagate Backup Plus £105 Similar capacity and performance in a lighter but less impressively engineered enclosure