With the Covid-19 pandemic situation ever-changing in Singapore, we might be quickly switching between working in office and working from home.
As such, having an external storage device to store important documents on the go becomes important. An external storage device like Western Digital (WD) My Passport SSD.
Unlike normal hard drives, solid-state drives (SSD) do not have any moving parts and thus less susceptible to damages from drops. In addition, they are much smaller and lighter as well.
SPECS
PRICE: $189 (500GB), $329 (1TB, version reviewed), $599 (2TB); available in Lazada and Shopee
INTERFACE: USB 3.2 Gen 2
WEIGHT: 45.7g
DESIGN
My Passport SSD has a footprint that is slightly bigger than an EZ-link card or a CashCard. And it measures only 9mm thick and weighs a mere 45.7g.
Available in four colours of gold, red, grey and blue (version reviewed), its sleek aluminium top cover has a nice wavy pattern. Its rounded corners ensure you always have a comfortable feel and grip of the SSD. It has a single USB-C port.
FOR
+ Fast transfer speeds
+ Sleek design
+ Compact and lightweight
+ Works with Mac and Windows out of the box
+ Drop-resistant
AGAINST
– No activity indicator light
– Very short USB-C cable
– Gets quite hot rather easily
Yet, it is said to be shock and vibration resistant. In fact, My Passport SSD has been rated to be drop resistant from up to 1.98m.
But I am not dropping the SSD review unit to find out if the claim is true. My Passport SSD’s exterior looks way too sleek to risk being scratched.
And it doesn’t only look good in the outside. In the inside, it secures your data in the inside with its password-enabled 256-bit AES encryption.
In other words, even if you lose the hard drive, no one can have access to your documents unless they have your password. Conversely, if you forgot your password, you have no access too.
PERFORMANCE
My Passport SSD comes pre-formatted in the exFAT format, which means it is compatible with both Mac and Windows machines out of the box – great for someone who works on both platforms.
But you can always re-format it to the format you prefer. Not to mention, the SSD also comes with five years of warranty.
On paper, this SSD offers sequential reading speeds and writing speeds of 1,050MB/s and 1,000MB/s respectively. To test the SSD, I connect it to my 2018 MacBook Pro and Windows PC gaming rig using the cable provided.
In the Mac-only BlackMagic Disk Speed Test benchmark test, the SSD achieves a maximum writing speed of 928MB/s and a maximum reading speed of 910MB/s.
But in the Windows-only Crystal-DiskMark benchmark test, it achieves a slightly better sequential read speed of 1,059MB/s and a sequential write speed of 1,026MB/s.
For real-life scenarios, I transferred a folder with 40GB worth of photos and videos from my MacBook Pro to the SSD. And it took only 70 seconds for the transfer to complete, which is amazingly fast.
On the downside, it does not come with an activity indicator light. So you have no idea if a transfer is done apart from looking at the computer itself.
The only indicator is probably how hot the SSD becomes when you are transfer files to-and-fro the SSD. You might want to be careful when touching the SSD when it is working hard.
In addition, the SSD comes with a rather short (or 16cm to be exact) USB-C-to-USB-C cable. It looks like this is designed to work with laptops only. But it comes with a handy USB-C-to-USB-A adapter, if your laptop does not have a USB-C port.
VERDICT
If you are looking for an external storage for you to shuttle important documents to-and-fro office, you certainly should consider WD My Passport SSD.
With pricing starting at $189 (500GB) and up to $599 (2TB), it offers great value for money. This is especially so, when I suspect you probably can get it cheaper than the recommended retail price on online stores.
RATINGS
DESIGN: 9/10
PERFORMANCE: 8/10
VALUE FOR MONEY: 8/10
OVERALL: 8/10
