Given that these two products serve the same general purpose, the differences between them are striking. The Seagate stores several times as much data in a heavier package, and also offers noticeably faster performance. Transcend wins the face-off on the basis of smallest dimensions and lightest weight, but offers only average performance at best.

That's why a clear distinction is essential here. If you're looking for the lightest, most portable storage, the Transcend is the best offering. With up to 40 GB of storage space, you can still carry more data with you than any single USB memory stick is likely to offer for the foreseeable future. On the other hand, we recommend Seagate's Portable External Hard Drive for those users who want to seriously extend their storage space on a notebook, or want to easily transport a lot of data between desktop PCs.

Nevertheless, we also feel obligated to implore both manufacturers to improve their offerings. Seagate should seriously rethink its warranty terms, while Transcend needs to replace its USB chipset to improve performance - even some USB memory sticks can outperform the Transcend drive by a significant margin.