Angelbird SSD2go Pocket - Extremely Portable SSD
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
1,034 words · ~5 min read
0:00
is that an SSD in your pocket or are you
0:03
just happy to see me actually it's a bottle of
0:08
water if you're going to stuff yourself use something that it's at least the
0:12
right shape not Square that's
0:20
creepy Cooler Master V series semi modular power supplies feature 80 plus
0:25
gold efficiency and their gold guarantee 5-year warranty click now to learn more
0:30
all right so to move on from that awkward initial joke in as expedient a
0:34
manner as possible I'm going to distract you guys by showing you a close up of
0:38
that SSD that I was holding up this is the Angel bird SSD to go pocket not to
0:44
be confused with the SSD to go twin that we've checked out before it features the
0:48
same gorgeous anodized aluminium housing the same durable full-size usba
0:54
connector with an included cable and it comes in your choice of colors but
0:58
unfortunately purple's not an option this time so as long as you like blue red silver or black then you'll be
1:03
pretty much good to go but none of those are the important differences the big
1:06
ones are the size and the price in the
1:10
last year sstd pricing has come down a lot so rather than paying over
1:15
$900 for a dual 256 gig of the
1:18
physically much larger twin product you
1:21
can pick up a 512 of the pocket for less
1:24
than a doll per gig still very expensive
1:28
compared to a mechanical hard drive of course but not nearly as
1:32
fragile and much faster of course it's
1:35
not like hard drives and external ssds are the only options available though so
1:40
let's figure out how this product Stacks up against the entire competitive
1:44
landscape so representing portable USB 3 drives I've got the my passport Edge
1:49
from Western Digital so same interface USB 3 and similar form factor but this
1:54
time a mechanical Drive representing portable Thunderbolt ssds which do exist
2:00
even though I don't have one is a powered Thunderbolt enclosure with an
2:05
Intel 730 series SSD Frankenstein inside
2:08
of it and finally representing a category that only just emerged SSD
2:13
controller based usb3 drives we've got the Corsair Voyager GTX 256 gig a
2:18
product with similar ruggedness a slightly lower price and an even more
2:23
compact size so here's what the numbers look like I'll label these for you so
2:27
you actually know what you're looking at by the way our Thunder enclosure this is
2:30
Thunderbolt one by the way delivers the best performance in sequential rights
2:34
and large random rights so copying large
2:37
files over Thunderbolt to the drive will deliver 10 to 15% better performance
2:42
than our SSD to go pocket but then the tables turn and the angel bird Drive
2:48
pretty much takes over from there its sequential and random reads are well
2:52
over 30% faster and it's native uasp support basically a protocol that's much
2:57
more efficient for small data transactions over USB 3 lets it just
3:02
wreck the other Solutions when it comes to 4K so small data random right
3:06
performance especially as we increase the Q depth now to be clear this type of
3:11
performance is mostly not impactful unless you're running an OS or a
3:15
database on the drive or something but I'm not going to say no to this kind of
3:20
performance if it isn't going to cost me extra which leads us into analysis time
3:25
if we compare to the Thunderbolt solution something that has a similar
3:29
per Gab cost then I guess it isn't costing us extra so it becomes a very
3:34
obvious choice to go for the angel bird but when we compar to something else
3:39
things get a little bit muddier a strong argument can be made for the Voyager GTX
3:44
it's smaller and less expensive but it's
3:47
not a perfect product either my keyring broke off making the size a bit of a
3:51
disadvantage in some ways since I'm very likely to lose it now and its
3:55
performance while very impressive for a thumb drive is not not as good as the
4:00
SSD to go pocket and then of course hard drives are just so darn cheap even the
4:06
my passport air chosen for its similar
4:09
all metal industrial design can be had for 65 bucks for a 500 gig model but of
4:15
course I wouldn't do that drop test on a drive like this because hard drives are
4:20
just more fragile than ssds Now angel
4:23
bird doesn't includes some value added extras including 6 months of Parallels
4:27
for Mac 3 months of bitwig Studio some
4:30
music software and then some royalty-free music that you can Tinker around with but ultimately deciding
4:35
which of these products is best for you is probably going to come down to the
4:39
convenience and the performance characteristics and how all of that
4:42
aligns with your personal preference I do have to say though I'm impressed with
4:46
how far Angel bird has come in the last year the pocket delivers the same
4:50
Immaculate build quality as its predecessor with Incredible performance
4:55
and it looks like a winner in my book look how small it is anyway guys thanks
5:00
for watching like this video if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment letting me know if you
5:04
have you know requests for future videos or anything to say about this product
5:07
would you buy an external SSD which of these four would you be interested in
5:11
love to hear about you from you about that also check out the link in the
5:15
video description the support us link has links for where to buy cool t-shirts
5:19
like this one give us a monthly contribution or change your Amazon bookmark to one with our affiliate code
5:23
so we get a small Kickback whenever you buy books or whatever it is people buy
5:27
on Amazon these days thanks again for watching and as always don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already