LaCie is a Seagate-owned model that is recognized for its rugged moveable HDDs and SSDs; its Rugged Mini SSD continues to be an important selection if you’d like a weather-resistant chassis and quick information transfers. LaCie is setting loftier targets with its newest product, the Rugged Pro5 SSD. Whereas the SSD appears to be like related 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 at the least 5 instances quicker than what most exterior SSDs — just like the Beetle X31 and Samsung T9 — can handle. The Rugged Pro5 SSD is aimed toward content material creators, has a 50GB cache buffer, and allows enhancing 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 Artistic Cloud All Apps plan whenever you register the drive, a $59 worth — the deal is legitimate when you’re an present Adobe person.
Proper now, Thunderbolt 5 is proscribed to the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Professionals 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 assessment of the drive right now 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 appears to be like just 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 individual declare, I’ve no doubts in regards to 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. Meaning 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 definitely 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 ample for my use case — connecting to a large number 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 effectively 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 related 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 of heat after prolonged transfers, however it’s consistent with different exterior SSDs I’ve examined.
If something, the Rugged Pro5 SSD proved to be overkill for many of my use circumstances, which embody 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 capable of check the drive to its full potential, it’s noticeably quicker than another exterior SSD I examined. The drive is at a premium due to the rugged design and unmatched connectivity, and when you work with 8K/6K video and have bandwidth-heavy information wants, I can not consider one other drive that is nearly as good.