GEAR GROUP TEST
G-TECHNOLOGY G-DRIVE MOBILE PRO SSD 1TB £608/$699 www.g-technology.com
for protection, though, at a fairly pocket- friendly 112x80x17mm (4.41x3.15x0.67in), while weighing 200g (0.5lb), so a little heavier than some in the group. It has an aluminium heat sink core that stops the exterior getting hot, and during extended write times it didn’t seem to increase in temperature at all. The G-Drive Mobile Pro SSD comes preformatted for MacOS 10.13 and later, but can be used with Windows 10 via reformatting. A Thunderbolt 3 cable is included, which also powers the drive, and it’s covered by a limited five-year warranty. PROMOVIEMAKERRATING: 9/10 Super-fast Thunderbolt speed, superb build Cons: Needs formatting forWindows, needs Thunderbolt, heavier than some
Future-proofed in all the right ways, the G-Technology G-Drive Mobile Pro allows for huge transfer rates up to 2800MB/s via its Thunderbolt 3 connection. All that speed means absolutely no lag, no matter what you’re editing – even multi-streaming 8K footage at full frame rate or working on VR projects. You can transfer 1TB of content in only seven minutes. This means it’s arguably more suitable for videographers wanting to edit on the move than just back up on location. The drive is also available in a 500GB capacity for about half the price. The Mobile Pro SSD is built to match its speed, with a highly durable metal casing adding up to an impressive level of shock resistance; we dropped it from three metres without any loss of function, and it also offers crush-proof spec of up to 1000lb. It doesn’t sacrifice portability
The Rugged RAID Pro’s ace card is an embedded SD card reader, meaning you can back up files on location without needing a separate card reader, and this worked very smoothly on test; it’s a UHS-II speed card reader, so files were transferred quickly. Although the Rugged RAID Pro uses a fast USB 3.1 Gen 1 connection, it’s also an HDD design with two disks, so speed isn’t up to what solid state drives offer. The top speed is 240MB/s, and like all hard disks this fastest rate is available in the RAID 0 configuration. If youmirror your files it’ll drop off, so editing off the drive is best done in RAID 0. The drive has an IP rating of 54 and survived a quick dowsing in our test. The rubber outer allows drops of up to 1.2m and it’s one of the only drives in the group to come with a protective plug to stop the card slot, USB connection and power port getting clogged up. A spare one is provided in case it gets mislaid. On the power front, it’s bus-powered, but an included AC adapter lets you run it that way if there’s not enough juice from a port. The drive comes with a limited three-year warranty. PROMOVIEMAKERRATING: 8/10 Pros: Lots of capacity and mirroring options, hardy Cons: Doesn’t offer greatest speed LACIE RUGGED RAID PRO 4TB £319/$349 www.lacie.com
LEXAR SL 100 512GB £118/$99 www.lexar.com
it also offers file encryption – Lexar’s EncryptStick Lite – to protect files, which is very straightforward to set up and use, with a password accessing the secure DataVault portion of the drive and any files deleted from it securely erased. At 55x73.4x10.8mm/2.165x2.89x0.425in and weighing 70.5g/0.155lbs, it’s tiny, too. Smaller than a packet of cigarettes, and certainly pocket-friendly and with no awkward angles that might snag on clothing. A three-year limited warranty is included.
Lexar’s SL 100 drives are portable solid state models with capacities of 240GB and 512GB. As you’d expect from a solid state model, the SL 100 has very fast read and write times of 550MB/s read and 400MB/s write, which equates to about four times as fast as a traditional spinning disk, and the transfer rate is kept high by its USB 3.1 connection. The SL 100 also uses a USB Type C connector, whichmeans nomore messing about trying to get the thing in the right way; the included cable is Type C to the more familiar ‘which way does it go in’ Type A, so you’ll need to upgrade it if you’re using a laptop without standard ports. A small LED indicator light lets you knowwhen transfer is complete, and it’s preformatted to work on bothMac andWindows. The SL 100 isn’t ruggedly designed like some portable drives in this group, but being solid state it’s inherently better able to deal with changes in temperature (0°C to 70°C when operating) and vibration. Nor is there any means of physically locking the drive down, but importantly for any mobile device that youmight use in public spaces,
PROMOVIEMAKERRATING: 8/10 Pros: Affordable, good speed Cons: Maximum512GB capacity
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PRO MOVIEMAKER WINTER 2018
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