Transcend ESD400 256GB External SSD Review

1. Introduction2. Transcend ESD400 256GB3. ATTO/Crystal Disk Mark / AS SSD4. Real LIfe5. Closing Thoughts6. View All Pages

Transcend's ESD400 may be small in statue but it does pack quite a punch. It is a classy looking drive with the diamond patterned front and it is a perfect size and weight to place in your pocket to carry around – it is actually so small that if you have particularly large pockets you may end up feeling like you've lost it.

The Elite Data Management utility is a very useful download to have but it is a bit odd that it doesn't come pre-installed on the drive, but it's a free download so it's just a minor nitpick.

As you might expect with an SSD, the ESD400 is a very fast external drive, well it is when its handling large file sizes, when it comes to handling small bity files the performance does drop off quite a bit. We bettered the official 410MB/s read figure for the drive in both ATTO (459MB/s) and ASSSD (419MB/s) although under test conditions the drive couldn't get to the official maximum write figure of 380MB/s, producing 339MB/s in ATTO and 314MB/s in ASSSD.

The 4K read/write performance at queue depth one was disappointing producing just 16.65MB/s for reads and 39.86MB/s for writes. Using real life data it took just 4 minutes to transfer a 50GB of small files to the ESD400 and just under 4 minutes to copy the folder back. The larger file size contents of the 12GB Movie folder took just 41.1 seconds to write to the drive and 28.7 seconds to copy back.

We found the 256GB ESD400 on sale at LambaTek for £108.59 (inc VAT) HERE

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Pros

• Small size.
• Performance.

Cons

• 4K performance was disappointing.
• Not cheap.

Kitguru says: Yes it's a bit on the pricey side but its very fast and its small size makes it ideal to carry around without noticing it.

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