Product Listing

Transcend ESD200 Portable SSD (256GB) - Flash in Your Pocket

By Kenny Yeo - 10 Apr 2013
Launch SRP: S$408

Introduction

Portable Flash Storage

The Transcend ESD200 Portable SSD is a portable external hard drive unlike any other. While most manufacturers are content to fit 5400rpm mechanical hard disks into their portable external hard drives, the Transcend drive has gone for broke with their ESD200 portable external hard disk and have instead equipped it with a 1.8-inch form factor SSD.

As you might know, SSDs are significantly faster than traditional mechanical hard disks. And as we have demonstrated in our review of one of the fastest mechanical hard disks currently available, the VelociRaptor from Western Digital, it was no match for even mainstream SSDs.

Will the USB 3.0 interface limit the Transcend ESD200's performance? Let's find out.

With this in mind, it is not surprising to see that Transcend, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of flash memory products, have fitted their ESD200 portable external hard drive with an SSD. In theory, the SSD should be much faster than the mechanical hard disks that most other manufacturers put in their portable external hard drives, but then there’s the question of its USB 3.0 interface.

To be certain, USB 3.0 offers substantially more bandwidth that its USB 2.0 predecessor - 5Gbps vs. 480MBps - and we have no doubts that the Transcend ESD200 portable SSD will be faster than typical portable external hard disks with mechanical drives, but how fast will it be? And will the Transcend ESD200’s USB 3.0 interface hamper its performance? These are the questions that we hope to address in our review. But first, let's have a closer look at the drive.

The Transcend ESD200 portable SSD is much more compact than a regular 2.5-inch portable external hard drive. Here it is next to the Seagate Backup Plus.

It's much thinner too and will slip into pockets easily.

The drive comes with a handy carrying pouch and a USB 3.0 cable.

 

 The top side of the drive is a button that enables Transcend's one-touch backup. To the right of it is a standard USB 3.0 micro-B type connector.

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7.5
  • Design 8
  • Performance 8
  • Features 8
  • Value 6.5
The Good
Much faster than typical 2.5-inch portable external hard drives
Very compact
Bundled backup software has lots of features
The Bad
Very pricey
Gimmicky "One Touch Auto-Backup" button
Bundled backup software is clumsy and unintuitive
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