Overall and Final Verdict

So how did the My Passport turn out? I haven’t reviewed an external drive with a spinning drive in it for 6 years and I had to go back to that point to get an idea of how things compare. Honestly, when it comes to performance things really haven’t changed. The sequential read and write performance of the My Passport were spot on with the ioSafe Portable. Without a 7200 RPM drive or an SSD, I think that’s about what you should expect. With it being a hard drive, it did really choke on the high queue depth stuff with low file sizes. Pictures were slower but still good, but if you had to use this to back up a TB of tiny word documents and other small files it might take a long time to get that done. That said my only other issue was with the cable length but that was a small issue. I understand the need for a short cable, I might also be frustrated if they gave you 10 feet of cord, but if you use this with a desktop hopefully you are like me and have a shelve right above it.

So what did I like about the My Passport? Well obviously I liked the orange color, but beyond that, I really dig all of the color options they have available. It's really a shame they don’t also have these options for the SSD version. I also really like the simple but stylish look that WD has been using, it only takes a little contrast in smooth and groovy to let you know right away that this is a WD device. One of the main benefits of the My Passport, especially over flash drives and some of the external SSD options is the capacity available. Even with this being the smallest option at 1TB you are hard pressed to find a flash drive or SSD that is comparable, obviously WD has the My Passport SSD and there are a few 1TB flash drives but they do get expensive at that size. Not to mention have you ever searched Amazon for a 1TB flash drive, it looks like almost everyone who sells a small 1 or 2 GB flash drive has mistakenly listed them as 1TB drives. So for most people who need to back up a lot of data, a drive like this is your only option. Especially when you get up into the 4TB capacity.

Then, of course, we have the price point. You just aren’t going to come close to $54.99 for a Terabyte of storage with a flash drive or SSD option for a while. The 1TB WD My Passport SSD that I love and use all of the time still runs you over $300. That said, if we dive into other external drives, there are a few options that are a few dollars cheaper (even from WD). A few even have a few color options, but none as many as what WD is offering. So if you need just a basic 1TB black external you could save a few bucks, but if you want something that looks good as well then WD has the My Passport.

fv5recommended

Live Pricing: HERE

Author Bio
garfi3ld
Author: garfi3ldWebsite: http://lanoc.org
Editor-in-chief
You might call him obsessed or just a hardcore geek. Wes's obsession with gaming hardware and gadgets isn't anything new, he could be found taking things apart even as a child. When not poking around in PC's he can be found playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, or Civilization 5 or watching a wide variety of TV shows and Movies. A car guy at heart, the same things that draw him into tweaking cars apply when building good looking fast computers. If you are interested in writing for Wes here at LanOC you can reach out to him directly using our contact form.

Log in to comment

We have 2105 guests and no members online

supportus