January 4, 2024

LaCie Rugged Mini SSD review: eye-catching design and performance

design, eyecatching, LaCie, mini, performance, Review, Rugged, SSD

In one look

Expert rating

Benefits

Fits in a shirt pocket
Fast 20Gbps USB performance
Beautiful
Shock-reducing silicone sheath

The inconvenients

USB cache is not captive

Our Verdict

The LaCie Rugged Mini SSD offers good performance and style to spare. There’s also a software bundle, a longer-than-average warranty, and free data recovery if you need it.

LaCie offers some of the most stylish external storage on the market. The Rugged Mini SSD reviewed here follows suit with a Neil Poulton-designed shock-absorbing sleeve that makes up most of the distinctive and attractive look. The Rugged Mini is fast, fits in your pocket and looks great!

Further reading: Check out our roundup of the best portable SSDs to learn more about competing products.

Design features

The LaCie Rugged Mini SSD is a 20Gbps USB external SSD with a Type-C connector, so it’s compatible with all Windows and Mac computers, as well as most other devices. The internals are NVMe, and undoubtedly Seagate, as it is LaCie’s parent company.

The drive measures just over 4 inches long, by 2.61 inches wide, by 0.675 inches thick with its bright orange shock-absorbing cover, and 3.7 inches long, by 2.32 inches wide , with a hair less than 0.5 inch. inches thick without it. Weight is 3.6 ounces (lid).

As for the sleeve/cover, SSDs are already extremely robust in terms of g-forces, so the sleeve is not as beneficial a feature as it might be on an HDD. In other words, it’s all about looks. As for that…

You probably won’t want to remove the sleeve, because without it the disc is a rather bland silver rectangle with putty-colored end caps and a large sticker designating where it was manufactured and assembled (Taiwan and Thailand). In other words, not so attractive.

Jon L. Jacobi

Which brings me to my only complaint: the Type-C port cover is not captive. Unless you’re more consistent than I am about where you place things, this is a sure recipe for losing said cap.

There are no claims of IP rating (Ingress Protection, aka weather resistance), so this isn’t a problem. Additionally, we’ve also seen a number of Type-C ports discovered on IP-rated Bluetooth speakers, so the cover may not be necessary. Regardless, if a plug is included, it must be captive.

The LaCie Rugged Mini SSD has a three-year limited warranty, but LaCie didn’t specify what the limitations were. Definitely serious physical damage and probably excessive amounts of data written to the drive, although the company hasn’t provided any TBW (terabytes writable) rating.

What LaCie provides is useful software (backup and security) and a free recovery service if you need it (God forbid!). Beyond that, the company also touts construction using at least 30% recycled materials. Every little gesture counts!

Performance

The Rugged Mini is the third fastest 20Gbps SSD we’ve tested, just behind the incredible USB4 OWC 1M2 and the Crucial X10. It ranked 5th overall among external SSDs when considering the Thunderbolt 3 Sandisk Pro-G40 and OWC Envoy Pro FX.

The CrystalDiskMark 8 sequential tests presented confirm its placement in the upper echelon.

The Rugged Mini’s sequential test results were quite good, if not quite on par with the OWC 1M2.

CrystalDiskMark 8 also showed the Rugged Mini’s random performance to be quite good, according to the test.

Overall, these CrystalDiskMark 8 4K results from the Rugged Mini are very good.

The Rugged Mini is a bit late in our 48GB examples. It’s not a bad time, as you can see on the Samsung T9, but it’s not a good time like the one delivered by the OWC 1M2.

We wouldn’t call the Rugged Mini lazy in our 48GB transfers, but we were slightly disappointed that it took so long for the drive to write the folder for smaller files.

The Rugged Mini redeemed itself with an exceptional write time of 450 GB. It eventually ran out of steam (i.e. the secondary cache), at which point the write speed dropped to around 200 MB/s. That’s not fantastic, although few people will write a solid terabyte of data in one go.

The Rugged Mini delivered exceptional write performance of 450 GB. But it will eventually slow down to 200 MB/s if you add another 450 GB to it. This is the case for most readers.

While it’s not the fastest of the fast, the Rugged Mini can at least claim a seat at the table. Subjectively, you’ll probably find it quite fast.

Pricing and availability

The Rugged Mini SSD costs £69.99/$80 for the 500GB capacity, £109.99/$120 for the 1TB, £179.99/$190 for 2TB and £329.99/$350 for the 4TB model. That’s pretty reasonable given the sleek style and cost of NVMe SSDs these days.

We can only find it on Amazon at the time of writing, but we expect wider availability soon.

Should you buy the LaCie Rugged Mini SSD?

The Rugged Mini SSD should definitely be on your short list of small USB SSDs. It’s not the cheapest, but it’s among the best, and hey… it’s orange!

This review was originally published on PCWorld.

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