RAVPower Mini External Portable SSD REVIEW

A great portable drive for multiple uses.

If there is one thing I’m always running short on its storage. The big problem I have with portable hard drives is their physical size. I like to travel lite and I’m really glad that there are finally some solid state drives that are both affordable and provide high quality performance. RAVPower, a company that I know well for their chargers and rechargeable batteries, has recently brought a portable SSD to market that gives tech users a look at what the future holds for portable storage. 

DETAILS & FEATURES 

The Mini External Portable SSD is designed to be a super small option for portable storage. It is available in two capacities — 512GB and 1TB — and connects via USB-C. The SSD provides accelerated 540MB/s data transfer speeds and is built with NAND flash. The hard drive is palm-sized and features a shock-proof shell made with zinc alloy. Even though it’s in a small package, the SSD has incredible cooling performance. The SSD is designed to work with all USB-C devices including tablets, laptops, MacBooks, iPad Pros, Android devices, and Windows machines.

SPECS

• Interface: USB-C port, support USB 3.1 Gen 2 and Gen 1 
• Transfer Speed: 540 Mbps
• Controller: Silicon Motion SM2258XT
• Chipset: JMS580 for 10Gbps Rate
• Data Encryption: ATA Lock & Management Software
• Shockproof Height: 1m 
• Compatible System: Windows 7 or above, macOS 10.11 or above, Android
• Compatible Device: iPad Pro, MacBook Pro, Xbox, etc.
• File Format Supported: NTFS/Fat32/exFAT; SATA III DATA transmission
• Cable Interface: USB 3.1 Gen 2
• Cable Plug Test: 5000 times
• Operation Temperature: 5-35ºC/41-95º F
• Dimensions: 102 x 30 x 8.5mm/4.0 x 1.2 x 0.3 in

USER EXPERIENCE

There are several aspects of the RAVPower Mini External Portable SSD that I appreciate. The first is its size. It’s tiny. I can easily slip it into my pocket for those ‘just in case’ moments or slide it into my laptop bag knowing it doesn’t take up too much space. It’s very, very convenient. On the flip side of that, it does not have a built-in cable. This means that I have to carry a separate cable around for connection purposes. This isn’t a huge hassle since my MacBook Pro already uses USB-C, but it’s something to consider. 

When I plugged the SSD into my computer, it connected right away. I did notice, however, that it comes with software loaded on the hard drive. You don’t have to use it, but it’s available should you need it. The software pops up as a disk. There is a folder for PC, Mac, and the user manual. The user manual is multilingual and has very basic operations included. The hard drive image can be opened individually from the disk image that holds the software package. The hard drive image is blank. According to Disk Utility, the software packages only take up 26.3MB of space and the hard drive is formatted as ExFAT out of the box. 

After the basic operations and functions were established, I moved on to testing the performance of the SSD. The specs state that users can expect to achieve a transfer speed up to 540Mbps. I ran two benchmarking tests in order to measure the data transfer speed — Blackmagic Disk Speed Test and AJA System Test Lite. The Blackmagic test showed a 450Mbps write speed and a 509.1Mbps read speed. The AJA speed test specifically shows how a hard drive will work while using different video formats. It’s really intended to help video professionals identify the hard drives they should be working with. The first test I ran was to see how the SSD would work with 1080P HD video. The results showed a 335Mbps write speed and a 482Mbps read speed. The second test showed a 424Mbps write speed and a 510 Mbps read speed when working with 4096×3112 4K-Full video streams. 

CONCLUSIONS

I’ve been very happy with the performance of the RAVPower Mini External Portable SSD. It’s lightweight and offers high-quality storage options for people on the go. It has a comparable price to other external SSD’s of its size. I think it will serve users well no matter what its purpose is. 

For more information, visit ravpower.com, Facebook, or Twitter.