LaCie is a Seagate-owned model that is identified for its rugged transportable HDDs and SSDs; its Rugged Mini SSD continues to be an amazing alternative if you need a weather-resistant chassis and quick information transfers. LaCie is setting loftier objectives with its newest product, the Rugged Pro5 SSD. Whereas the SSD seems to be comparable in design to older fashions, it has Thunderbolt 5 connectivity, and is ready to go as much as a ridiculous 6700MB/s when studying information, and writes crossing 5300MB/s.
To place that into context, that is no less than 5 instances sooner than what most exterior SSDs — just like the Beetle X31 and Samsung T9 — can handle. The Rugged Pro5 SSD is geared toward content material creators, has a 50GB cache buffer, and permits modifying 8K or 6K movies on Thunderbolt 5 units with none slowdowns.
LaCie sells the Rugged Pro5 SSD in a 2TB variant that retails for $399, and there is a 4TB mannequin (the one I am utilizing) that prices $599. The model features a one-month membership to Adobe’s Inventive Cloud All Apps plan once you register the drive, a $59 worth — the deal is legitimate in case you’re an current Adobe consumer.
Proper now, Thunderbolt 5 is restricted to the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Execs with M4 Professional and M4 Max silicon, and the 2024 refresh of the Mac Mini with M4 Professional. I take advantage of a customized Home windows gaming machine that has Thunderbolt 4 connectivity, and that is what I used to check the drive.
I can not do a full-fledged evaluate of the drive at the moment as I haven’t got Thunderbolt 5 units available, however I am aiming to alter that comparatively quickly, and can add artificial scores as quickly as I get the M4 Professional-based Mac Mini. With that out of the way in which, let’s get began.
The Rugged Pro5 SSD seems to be much like earlier fashions, however that does not imply it is any much less distinctive. If something, the colourful blue hue makes the drive instantly stand out, and the rugged casing — designed by famous Scottish designer Neil Poulton — permits the drive to take a beating. Seagate says the drive is usable after being pushed over by a 2-ton automobile, and whereas I did not check that specific declare, I’ve no doubts concerning the sturdiness of the drive.
Along with being run over by a automobile, the Rugged Pro5 SSD can stand up to three-meter tumbles, and it has IP68 ingress safety — the identical because the greatest Android telephones. Which means the drive is proof against mud ingress, and it may be submerged in as much as 1.5 meters of water as much as half-hour with none points.
Despite the rugged chassis, the SSD is well pocketable, and coming in at 150g, it would not weigh a lot both. The drive connects over USB-C and leverages Thunderbolt 5, and LaCie features a Thunderbolt 5 cable with the bundle. The cable is simply 0.3m lengthy, and it was enough for my use case — connecting to a mess of telephones, tablets, and my Home windows machine.
The Thunderbolt 5 commonplace has elevated bandwidth going as much as 80Gbps, however the drive works simply as nicely over Thunderbolt 4’s 40Gbps, and USB-C at 40Gbps, 20Gbps, and 10Gbps. I received sequential reads of 1810MB/s and writes of 1800MB/s over Thunderbolt 4, and comparable bandwidth over USB 4. Due to the cache buffer, writes go down after you cross the 50GB restrict, however this makes a much bigger distinction over Thunderbolt 5.
The enclosed nature of the design means it will get a bit heat after prolonged transfers, however it’s in step with different exterior SSDs I’ve examined.
If something, the Rugged Pro5 SSD proved to be overkill for many of my use circumstances, which embrace transferring media from telephones, shifting information to and from the iPad Professional and my Home windows machine. It was easy at these duties, and I had no points utilizing the drive with my Honor Magic 7 Professional, ASUS Zenfone 12 Extremely, Vivo X200 Professional, and iPad Professional M4 2024.
Regardless that I wasn’t in a position to check the drive to its full potential, it’s noticeably sooner than some other exterior SSD I examined. The drive is at a premium due to the rugged design and unmatched connectivity, and in case you work with 8K/6K video and have bandwidth-heavy information wants, I can not consider one other drive that is pretty much as good.
With a rugged design and reads exceeding 6700MB/s, the Rugged Pro5 SSD is an excellent alternative. If you happen to want the quickest SSD that cash should purchase in the present day, there is not something higher.
