Review: Transcend USB3 Portable SSD Reviewed by: Vroom Manufactured: in Taiwan ADVERTISEMENT

Transcend has kindly lend us their latest USB3
Portable 1.8” SSD drive. On USB3 the drive can reach speed up to
260Mb/Sec, it can be powered by the USB portand also there are no moving
parts so it's less easily damaged if you accidently drop it.

USB3 is now
the fastest way to connect your external HDD or pen drive, but most of the time
you can't take full advantage of what USB3 has to offer, if you are
using a mechanical hard disk. Even modern pen drives can't push USB3 to its
limits. Transcend did the next best thing that would push your USB3
connection to the maximum. They replaced the mechanical drive with a modern SSD.
With this you get high read/write speeds, close to zero seek times, no moving
parts and also you save weight.

So before we continue with the review, here
is some information about Transcend.

Company Information

Transcend is a well-known manufacturer of
memory products, including USB flash drives, flash memory cards, card readers,
computer RAM and a variety of consumer electronics goods. 

The company was founded in 1988 with its
headquarters in Taipei, Taiwan and claim to be the first memory module
manufacturer in Taiwan and also the second in the world to receive ISO 9001
certification.  Their products are marketed around the world, serving all the
major markets. 

Further information on the Transcend
Company Profile can be found on
their website.

 

Packaging and drive specifications

Let's start your review by taking a close
look at the package of the Portable SSD.

The
front side of the box.

The
back has all the details about the product.

Right
and left side of the box.

Here are all the contents of the Transcend
Portable SDD. Inside the box is a split Y USB3 cable, the 1.8” hard drive,
a quick start guide, warranty card, and also two brochures.

On the front side we see the Transcend logo,
and on to there is the Copy button, that also has the LED that has two colours,
blue when it’s connected via USB3 and orange when the drive is connected using USB2,
and on the other end there is a logo that reminds us that this drive is a USB3
SSD.

Not much on the back, everything is written
in orange and black colour. You have only the necessary info about the product,
Portable SSD 128Gb and the serial number.

At the front side there is the USB3
connector, with the SuperSpeedUSB logo.

The LED lights up blue when the device is
connected via USB3, and orange when it’s connected using USB2.

Before I start my tests I need to say a few
words about the build quality. Overall the built quality is very good, the housing
of the Portable SSD is built of good quality plastic and it’s not the
usual hard plastic that most external disks have. It’s tough and also very hard
so that the drive will absorb most of the energy of a fall and survive. It’s
also very hard to leave any fingerprints on the device.

Test equipment

• CPU: Intel i7 750 @ 3.3Ghz
• Motherboard: Gigabyte P55A-UD4
• RAM: Corsair Dominator 2x2Gb
• HDD: Western Digital Black 1TB (OS)
• ODD: LG GGW-H20L
• PSU: Chieftec GPS-500-AS A (500 Watt)
• Monitor: Fujitsu Siemens 22”
• OS: Windows 7 64x professional (Last updated on 18
  April 2011)

Test Software

• ATTO
• HD Tune pro
• CrystalDiskMark x64
• AS SSD

 

Now let's move on to the next page and
start our tests...