LaCie Porsche Design Mobile Drive Review

The LaCie Porsche Design Mobile Drive ($149.95 for 2TB) has style in spades. With a slim, all-aluminum body, this is an attractive external hard drive that's also capable of super-fast transfer speeds. That being said, looks aren't everything. On a per-gigabyte basis, this drive won't give you the best bang for your buck, and is pretty minimalist in terms of extra features—two major reasons why the 4TB Seagate Backup Plus Portable Drive ($109.99 at Amazon) remains our Editors' Choice for external hard drives.

Design and Features

On the surface, the Mobile Drive ($119.00 at Amazon) looks very much like LaCie's P'9223 Slim . The Mobile Drive, however, lacks the P'9223's black plastic plugs, and the Porsche Design logo is centered on the top of the drive, not located on the top left. The right side of the Mobile Drive also houses a pinprick-size disk activity light and the USB-C port. And while the drive does feel nice and smooth to the touch, the edges are a bit sharp and might dig into your palm depending on your grip.

The 2TB Mobile Drive comes in gold or silver. You can also get the drive in 1TB ($119.99) and 4TB ($219.99) capacities, though you can only find these configurations in silver. At 0.4 by 5 by 3.3 inches (HWD) and 6.2 ounces, the Mobile Drive is quite slim and lightweight—you can throw this into your pocket or purse and not even know it's there. In the grand scheme of things, a few hundredths of an inch don't make a huge difference, but if you absolutely must have the thinnest, lightest drive, then it's worth looking at the 2TB Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Slim ( at Amazon) , which measures 0.37 by 2.99 by 4.46 inches and weighs 4.3 ounces. And if you're willing to shell out some serious cash, the 2TB Samsung Portable SSD T3 ( at Amazon) is a compact 0.4 by 2.3 by 2.9 inches and weighs a mere 1.6 ounces.

Given the focus on aesthetics, this is a drive that's built to be shown off and complement other stylish tech. Despite its sturdy build and easy portability, the Mobile Drive is not made to withstand trips to rough terrains, long drops, or harsh climates. For that, you'd be better off looking at ruggedized drives like the LaCie Rugged RAID ($299.00 at Walmart) or the Buffalo MiniStation Extreme NFC ($82.27 at Amazon) .

The Mobile Drive comes formatted for NTFS and is compatible with PCs running Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 10. It can also be reformatted for use on Macs running OS X 10.5 or later. For security, it comes with LaCie Private-Public software that enables 256-bit AES encryption. There's also the LaCie Backup Assistant software and an Eco mode for energy saving. But that's as far as it goes in terms of features. Unlike the Seagate Backup Plus, the Mobile Drive doesn't come with cloud storage, or extra near-field communication (NFC) security features like the Buffalo MiniStation Extreme NFC. Out of the box, the drive also comes with a USB-C cable, as well as a USB-C–to–USB-3.0 cable—so you don't have to worry if there isn't a USB-C port on your computer. In terms of warranty, the drive is covered for two years.

Performance and Cost

If speed is the name of the game, the Mobile Drive delivers. It completed our file transfer test, which times how quickly a drive can copy a 1.22GB folder, in less than a second when connected via USB-C and in 11 seconds over USB 3.0. That puts the Mobile Drive on par with the Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Slim (10 seconds), the Seagate Backup Plus (12 seconds) when using the older connection technology. For comparison, the Samsung Portable SSD T3, also connected via USB 3.0, managed 6 seconds.

On our PCMark 7 storage test, which measures performance across a range of general-usage scenarios, the Mobile Drive scored a respectable 1,895 points. That's slightly behind the Seagate Backup Plus (1,985) and the Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Slim (2,028), but ahead of the 2TB Western Digital My Passport Ultra ($99.99 at Office Depot® & OfficeMax®) (1,432) and the Buffalo MiniStation Extreme NFC (1,423).

At a price of $149.95, the 2TB Mobile Drive rings up at about 7.4 cents per gigabyte. That's not too bad if you take into account that it's made of aluminum, not plastic, and it has USB-C capability. But this isn't the greatest value considering the amount of storage and the lack of extra features. The Seagate Backup Plus, for example, has 4TB of storage on top of 200GB of Microsoft OneDrive cloud storage for two years and has a cost of only 3.8 cents per gigabyte. Alternatively, if you don't care about extra features or super-sleek design, then the 2TB Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Slim also delivers greater value at 4.9 cents per gigabyte.

Conclusion

The LaCie Porsche Design Mobile Drive is super slim, beautiful to look at, and can transfer files quite speedily. And while you can definitely find cheaper hard drives with the same or greater storage capacity, if you happen to have an eye for shiny, pretty things, then the cost on a per-gigabyte basis isn't egregious considering the Mobile Drive is USB-C compatible. The Seagate Backup Plus Portable Drive remains our Editors' Choice, however, as it provides greater value for double the capacity, and provides two free years of cloud storage.

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• Seagate Will Ship 18TB and 20TB Hard Drives in 2020
• How We Test Hard Drives