Transcend ESD400 Portable SSD Review – A Must Have For Photographers & Videographers

Photographers, videographers, and other such professions that need to manipulate large sums of rich media on a daily basis – and especially on the go – pretty much all need one thing: a fast, lightweight portable storage device. Why? Because anything else slower will create bottlenecks when it comes to transferring data to and from their laptops and their home computers. And even for the most part, mainstream consumers can also take advantage of fast portable storage when they regularly transfer large files to and from their friends’ and families’ computers. That’s where Transcend’s ESD400 Portable SSD comes in. It’s a very small – about the size of a pack of cards or cigarettes – storage device that runs on NAND Flash; the same technology used in Internal SSD drives. That means it can saturate the USB 3.0 connection (bolstered by the UASP feature) to get about 400MB/s read & write speeds. If that’s not convincing enough for you, we urge you to check out our full video review embedded above and more of our test data below!

Transcend ESD400 1TB – Est. PHP 17,000 / US$ 380

• USB 3.0 Portable SSD with UASP support
• Smaller than a pack of cards, only 56g
• Silent, no moving parts
• One Touch Backup feature
• Rated for 410MB/s read, 380MB/s write

Benchmark Scores

• Transcend ESD400 Portable SSD – 420MB/s | 394MB/s
• vs. USB 3.0 external HDD (WD Elements) – 92MB/s | 92MB/s
• vs. USB 3.0 flash drive (Sony) – 118MB/s | 22MB/s
• vs. Internal SSD (Samsung 850 Evo) – 516MB/s | 476MB/s

Pros:

• Very Small & Lightweight
• 4X faster than Portable HDD
• One Touch Backup Feature
• No moving parts, less prone to vibration / motion damage

Cons:

• Thick, hard to manage cable
• More expensive than HDD storage

The Transcend ESD400 is a great portable drive for professionals who handle large files on the go regularly. Its small, light, and performs nearly as fast as internal SSD drives. You’ll be paying more for that privilege, but the speed is more than enough to make it irreplaceable for some use cases – like video production on-the-go and back at home. Because of that, we give it our Highly Recommended Award.