LaCie Mobile Drive Portable HDD Review: Pretty Portable

Lavish and Spacious

LaCie's simply named Mobile Drive is a sleek-looking portable HDD, for those looking for some style in their external storage lives. But that’s really all it has going for it compared to most other comparable external drives. In testing, it hit speeds of up to 140MBps, which isn’t too bad for a 2.5-inch HDD-based external, but is in the stone age compared to SSD-based alternatives. And, although it does come in at lower cost than flash, be prepared to pay the LaCie tax for its aesthetics. LaCie demands a significant premium, at $25-50 per capacity, over similarly performing external HDD options on the market.

LaCie’s latest generation of external HDDs focuses on lavish design. And we can't blame the company, given that single-drive portable disk-based storage tends to be pretty similar (and stagnant) when it comes to performance, making it tough to differentiate. This portable external HDD feels as solid as it looks. The diamond-cut aluminum finish makes this drive one of the classiest-looking devices we have used this year. But, looks aren’t all it has going on.

LaCie’s Mobile drive comes in spacious capacities to store all your data. LaCie states that their largest capacity can store up to 165 hours of 4K video or up to 500,000 photos. It utilizes the new USB-C interface, but, because it’s still an HDD inside, can’t begin to saturate the interface.

Specifications

LaCie lists the availability of the Mobile Drive in four capacities: 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, and 5TB. All don’t have an official rating on LaCie’s website, but in testing, they can hit speeds of up to  about 140 MB/s. Unlike their SSD counterparts, the Mobile Drive features a shorter 2-year warranty.

Software and Accessories

Included with the drive are two USB cables, one a USB Type-C to Type-C cable and the other a USB Type-C to USB Type-A cable for broad compatibility. This means the drive will work with Thunderbolt 3- and USB 3-compatible devices.

From the factory, LaCie’s Mobile Drive comes pre-formatted as exFAT so that it is both PC and Mac compatible. Pre-loaded on the drive are a warranty document and a quick-start application to help you set up your Adobe membership and download LaCie’s Toolkit, which can be used to back up your data.

Like the LaCie Rugged RAID Pro we reviewed a few months ago, LaCie's Mobile Drive also features a 1-month membership to Adobe's Creative Cloud All Apps plan ($53 if purchased separately). Unfortunately, there is no encryption feature or software included.

Closer Look

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LaCie's Mobile Drive features an all-aluminum sandblasted finish and diamond-cut design in moon silver color. In addition to moon silver, there is also a space gray model to fully match your Mac, but it is only sold by Apple at this time.

Our 2TB review sample measures in at 10 x 87.8 x 121.6 mm and weighs about 74g. The 4TB and 5TB models are double the thickness and slightly larger overall. These also weigh about double what the 1TB and 2TB models weigh, due to additional storage platters on the internal drives.

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