Digital Lifestyle > All Reviews > Hardware > Storage > Hard drives > External hard drives > Verbatim External SSD review

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 Verbatim External SSD review

The External SSD is one of the cheapest SSDs currently available

Cliff Joseph

Manufacturer: Verbatim
Manufacturer: Verbatim
Pros: very light and compact back-up device, very good value for money
Cons: not very rugged, relatively modest performance
Min specs: Solid state drive - external (portable); Capacities: 32GB, 64GB, 128GB; USB 3.0; Interface Transfer Rate: 5.0 Gbps (USB 3.0); Internal Data Rate: 190MBps (read)/175MBps (write)
Price: £89 inc VAT
We rate this 4 out of 5.Star rating:

It may be one of the slower solid-state drives reviewed here, but the External SSD from Verbatim is also one of the cheapest and most portable.

Measuring just 9mm thick, 43mm wide and 90mm tall, this slimline drive is only slightly larger than the new iPod nano. Verbatim also includes a little carrying pouch as well, so it’s easy to slip it into your pocket or into a bag alongside your MacBook when you hit the road.

The glossy, black plastic casing looks smart enough, but doesn’t feel all that strong. It’ll be fine if you just carry it in your pocket as you head off to your favourite coffee shop, but if you regularly work outdoors then you might want to pay a little extra for one of the faster and more rugged drives from LaCie or Elgato.

The drive’s performance won’t take your breath away either. Like the Kingston Hyper X 3.0, the External SSD suffers from relatively poor write speeds – a mere 45.8MB/s with the large files of the Aja System Test and 60.0MB/s when backing up our 5GB batch of smaller test files. Read performance is better, at 180.2MB/s and 211.0MB/s respectively, but the External SSD still ends up in fourth place overall.

But, to be fair, those speeds still put it well ahead of a conventional USB 2.0 drive, and with a price of just £89 for a model with 128GB capacity it works out far cheaper than any of the other drives with comparable capacity. Kingston’s Hyper X 3.0 provides slightly better performance and costs about £6 less, but it only offers 64GB of storage compared 128GB for the External SSD. There’s also a 256GB model that costs £219, which again is cheaper than any of its rivals that offer 256GB capacities.

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