Seagate Seven product reviews

When it comes to portable storage, there are three key deciding factors for me: Price, Capacity and Portability. This unit takes the top step on the podium for portability as far as I am concerned, because it's slimness and metal shell made it perfect for travel overseas.

Having collected this from the supplier during a recent short trip to Australia, I had the opportunity to carry it with me in my hand luggage and on to the plane. It passed through customs without comment, and all the data I had put on it was still intact and uncorrupted by the scanning process. While that is nothing unexpected by today's standards, it is still good to note.

Utilising the new combo-style USB 3.0 cable, you can get some very serious transfer speeds out of this baby. Using a variety of test files - ranging from clusters of small files to one huge 70gb file - I got average read speeds of between 94-104MB/s, and write speeds ranging from 65-80MB/s. Even through a USB 2.0 port on my laptop, I was able to write to the drive at a fairly respectable 22MB/s, and read back at 30-32MB/s. What really pleased me though was that thanks to the clever design of the USB 3.0 combo plug design, the unit still functions perfectly, if slightly slower, utilising a standard USB 2.0 micro cable, the same as most common smartphones. This means you can carry just one cable, and use it across both devices in turns. Hard drive for work, phone charging over night. I do love multifunctional tech.

Durability was one I couldn't test too well, since this unit is a loaner. It did get a few bumps on the plane, even falling off the tray and onto the floor at one point - that was a heart-attack moment I assure you - but it still performs flawlessly 2 weeks later as I write this. I'm backing up my laptop to it as I write this review - it's humming along quite nicely. And speaking of that, it is so quiet, I can hardly tell the difference between when it's running and when it has gone into standby. Ultra quiet tech is becoming more of an important thing these days, so this is well placed on that race too.

Overall, the only real let down is the price, for me. At 500GB, this is possibly one of the smallest portable drives available these days, yet it carries a premium price tag. Yes, the tech is hardly mature - this is a super-slim drive and uses some cutting-edge manufacturing to get it all into such a slim package - but with the amount of storage on platters these days, I would have expected to see this hit the shelves at 1TB at the bare minimum. Still, we can't have everything, and there are still some sleek drives out there with 1TB or more for under a hundred bucks. But if you want something that will draw eyes and comments the moment you put it on the table and lift your hand away, then this is the one you are looking for!