Seagate FireCuda SSD
A premium storage and ports upgrade
The gaming dock boasts a high-speed Ethernet port and plenty of other connections
£354.99 FROM Seagate, seagate.com FEATURES 4TB hard drive, expandable M.3 NVMe SSD slot, 1x Thunderbolt 3 port, 1x DisplayPort, 4x USB 3.1 Gen3 ports, 1x USB 3.1 Gen2 battery charge port, 1x RJ45 Ethernet port, 1x 3.5mm audio-in/mic port, 1x 3.5mm audio-out port; 270x51x135mm, 2.67kg
The Seagate FireCuda Gaming Dock is like a supercharged external hard drive combined with a USB hub, bringing with it 4TB of storage as well as a bunch of extra connection ports.
Plugging your laptop into the gaming dock instantly gives you a high-speed Ethernet port and extra USB connections, as well as Thunderbolt 3 and DisplayPort 1.4 sockets if you need to connect an additional display. You will need a Thunderbolt 3-equipped laptop or desktop to use with the FireCuda Gaming Dock, though it uses the familiar USB-C connector type.
The dock is a solid black and grey slab of a device, with a soft, matt finish and a glowing, removable block which hides a slot that you can use to plug in a M.2 NVMe SSD drive – just in case the built-in 4TB HDD isn’t enough. There are some sturdy rubber feet to keep the drive in place, and it’s meant to be used horizontally rather than vertically.
Your Mac will pick up the FireCuda drive and its 4TB of storage as soon as you plug it in, so you can just get going straight away. If you want to set up an automated backup to the drive or change the lighting on the end block, you’ll need to install additional software from Seagate – this isn’t difficult to do though.
Power is supplied by the bundled mains plug and Thunderbolt 3, and you need both to get the drive to spring into life. The Thunderbolt 3 cable then controls the communication to and from your laptop or desktop, giving you plenty of extra ports and storage at the same time. The drive is quiet in operation, though this being a mechanical hard disk drive, you can hear it whirring. The main feature of the gaming dock is, of course, that 4TB of extra HDD storage you get when you connect it to your Thunderbolt 3equipped computer. We found 3.63TB free on the drive, so you don’t get to access the whole lot. If you want even more storage, and even faster storage, there’s the SSD slot.
Even the less speedy 7,200rpm HDD managed to shift at a fair clip: we were able to move over a 2.7GB file in about 10 seconds. Install an SSD, and you’ll get even better results. New accessories and other drives we plugged in were picked up pretty much instantly, and we had no complaints with the drive from a performance perspective.
Ports and all
In terms of the dock’s ports, you get an extra Thunderbolt 3 port (besides the one connected to your computer), plus 1x DisplayPort 1.4 port, 4x USB 3.1 Gen2 ports, 1x USB 3.1 Gen2 battery-charge port, an RJ45 Ethernet network port, a 3.5mm audio-in/mic port and a 3.5mm audio-out port. That’s an impressive array of connections for hooking up monitors, more external drives, speakers, gamepads, mice, keyboards, microphones and more, and if you’re going to make use of most or all of these then the FireCuda Gaming Dock starts to look like a very good investment. If you don’t need all of the ports, then you can save yourself some money and get a standard external drive instead.
At £354.99, the FireCuda Gaming Dock is not cheap, but it’s worth the cost if you’re going to make use of the connection ports and the external storage. The dock looks great – with customisable lighting, no less – and it also performs really well.