Minix NEO Storage Pro 480GB Review

1. Introduction2. Minix NEO Storage Pro 480GB3. ATTO/CrystalDiskMark/AS SSD4. Backup / Restore5. Throughput 6. PCMark 10 Data Drive Benchmark7. Real Life File Transfers8. Closing Thoughts9. View All Pages

You may not have heard of MINIX but they have been in the technology business since 2008, offering a range of Mini PCs, remotes, adapters and hubs. The latest addition to the product line is the NEO Storage Pro, a 4-in-1 storage hub with a built-in SSD for MacBook Air and Pro.

The original NEO Storage hub connected to a MacBook using a cable but the NEO Storage Pro does away with the cable, plugging directly into both Thunderbolt ports on the MacBook chassis. The NEO Storage Pro comes with an internal 480GB M.2 SSD.

 

With an official rating of 400MB/s for both read and writes, the internal SSD certainly isn't anywhere close to taxing the USB-C interface speed in the MacBook Air/Pro in its USB 3.1 Gen 2 mode, let alone Thunderbolt 3, though this is hardly surprising as it's a SATA M.2 drive. We could confirm both official performance figures, as when tested with the ATTO benchmark, the Storage Pro produced a read figure of 433MB/s, with writes at 401MB/s. However, the fastest read/write scores we saw came during the CrystalDiskMark 7 testing with reads of 454MB/s and writes at 421MB/s.

It's an elegant solution instead of having an external drive/hub and the associated cabling, but (and it's a big, big but)… you are giving up both Thunderbolt 3 ports on the Mac in return for a single Thunderbolt 3, a USB 3.0 port (Type-A) and HDMI port. Some may not find this problematic, but that is certainly a significant loss of functionality for many end-users, so it does depend how you use the Thunderbolt ports on your MacBook.

The MINIX NEO Storage Pro is set to cost £110.00, though we have been told by MINIX there will be 500 units available at £80, and another 500 units available at £100 for the ‘early bird' pricing. You can back the product on Indiegogo HERE.

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Pros

• Elegant design.
• Portable.
• All in one solution.

Cons

• The internal drive doesn't make full use of port speeds on the MacBook.
• The USB port is only USB 3.0.
• Uses both MacBook Thunderbolt 3 ports.

KitGuru says: The NEO Storage Pro is a neat solution for adding extra storage to your MacBook, but you have to balance this against losing both Thunderbolt 3 ports to use it.

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