Transcend ESD350C External SSD Review: Now Twice as Fast

Transcend, a long and well-known company in the world as a manufacturer of flash storage devices,

released a new model of external SSD - ESD350C. Editors gg received a test version with a storage capacity of 480 GB for testing (there are also modifications with 240 and 960 GB).

What is it?

This is an external hard drive on NAND 3D TLC flash memory chips, packaged in a lightweight and durable aluminum case, protected by a removable silicone case.

What does it look like?

Credit card-sized device (to thickness)this comparison does not apply). It has a USB Type-C connector and a tiny LED indicator. There is nothing more on the case - no buttons, no display, only a protruding nameplate on one of the sides. The cover is worn tight and is difficult to remove, however, the user has absolutely no need to remove it, except perhaps out of curiosity. In addition to the shockproof function, the cover hides 4 screws that hold the body halves together. The case is protected against unauthorized disassembly by holographic stickers-seals on both sides, the damage of which entails the loss of a three-year warranty. The bare SSD weighs a little over 70 grams, almost 90 in a case.

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What is included?

In addition to the drive in the case, there are two more cables in the box: USB A - USB C and USB C - USB C, both half a meter long.

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How comfortable is it?

The dimensions and weight of the drive are comfortable, its convenienthold in hand, it easily fits in your pocket or purse, but does not make you look for yourself for a long time. The indicator is quite bright, but when looking at an angle it becomes almost invisible due to the fact that the LED is located deep in the case.

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How fast is he?

The manufacturer declared the maximum speedread 1050 MB / s, write speed - 950 MB / s. This is twice as high as previous ESD230C / 240C / 250C models. Naturally, these are values for ideal conditions, the actual speed can vary greatly depending on which device the drive is connected to and what speed of ports and data carrier this device has. Here are the speed measurements on an editorial computer with USB 3.1 and SSD:

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On my old home PC with USB 2.0, the results are an order of magnitude lower:

In conjunction with a smartphone (Oukitel U23) subjectshowed good results for linear read / write and very weak for random. The test was carried out by the A1 SD Bench application, between the write and read tests, the smartphone was rebooted to exclude the effect of caching.

What is compatibility?

By default (from the factory), the drive is formatted toexFAT, however, this instance came for a test with the FAT32 file system and, accordingly, was read without any problems by all the devices to which I connected it, including a TV and a DVD player. But in this file system, the maximum file size is limited to four gigabytes, therefore, for example, a full-length film in high resolution and with a decent bitrate cannot be written to this medium. If there is such a need, it means that you need to change the file system to exFAT or NTFS, but then it’s not a fact that you can successfully connect it to something other than a Windows PC. Some smartphones work with exFAT, but not all. My Oukitel U23 on the MTK chipset refused to read SSDs with exFAT.

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Theoretically, the problem is solved by specializedsoftware that allows you to mount and read media with exFAT and NTFS (I managed to do this using a utility from Paragon Software), but in reality, not all applications can work with files through such a “gasket”. In general, this is a topic for another discussion.

Windows does not allow formatting the drive back to FAT32, or rather, it does not offer such an option in the standard utility.

To do this, you will have to use one of the third-party applications, for example, FAT23 Format:

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Are there any additional features?

Transcend Elite Firmware Offers Featuresbackup of randomly selected files and folders from a computer to an SSD (manually or according to a schedule, with or without encryption), restoration from backups and data synchronization. It can sync with Dropbox and Google Drive cloud storage. Unfortunately, this ghost application does not appear in the mirror in the screenshots, so the gallery below is copied from the official Transcend website. I checked the application’s performance, all functions work fine.

How is he at work?

With computers running Windows 7 andThe Windows 10 drive worked without any comments, it was detected and connected quickly, it was not very hot. In addition to tests, I used it to store RAW photos and work with them on home and office computers. Despite the lack of USB 3 support in both computers, the pictures were uploaded and traced quickly, it was comfortable to work.

A bunch of “smartphone + SSD” easily coped withwatching video in Full HD resolution with a bitrate of 27 Mb / s and a frame rate of 50 per minute. The only caveat is that after connecting the drive, you need to wait 2-3 minutes each time until the system checks it, and only after that you can work with files on the SSD.

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In the dry residue

Transcend ESD350C - Fast, Convenient andnice external SSD. Its price in Ukrainian retail is from 2300 UAH for 240 GB, from 3200 UAH for 480 GB and about 5000 UAH for 960 GB. This is about one and a half times more expensive than previous ESD230C / 240C models (with half the speed of reading and writing), which seems quite justified.

Transcend ESD350C

Fast and cute external SSD with USB 3.1 support

This external solid state driveIt will be of interest to those who need the maximum data transfer speed (using the USB 3.1 interface, you can achieve speeds of almost gigabytes per second) at a reasonable price.

Buy 240 GB

Buy 480 GB

Buy 960 GB

2 reasons to buy Transcend ESD350C:

you need a compact, capacious, fast and secure portable storage for working with important files on different computers and other gadgets;
You have a computer / laptop with the latest version of USB 3.1, and your old external drive needs a replacement.

1 reason not to buy the Transcend ESD350C: