Transcend ESD400K 256GB review
Expert’s Rating
Our Verdict
The Transcend ESD400K is a very light, portable and fast portable SSD drive. At only 56g, the portable drive is easy to carry around and competes with some of the very best portable drives in the market.
The Transcend ESD400K is a portable drive that has been around for quite some time, but yet still performs well versus its competitors. The portable drive uses NAND flash, where it is lightweight and easy to carry around. Also see:Best portable hard drives.
Transcend ESD400K 256GB review: Price
At 39p per GB, the Transcend ESD400K 256GB sits somewhat in-between its competitors, with a slightly expensive price for its capacity. The drive can be found for£93.60 on Amazonand be found in 128-, 500GB and 1TB variants. The drive only comes in black, but does come bundled with a USB 3.0 cable and a small slip-on cover, allowing you to protect your drive.
Transcend ESD400K 256GB review: Features and design
The ESD400K has a very handy physical button, which can be used for a one-click button for backups. The handy feature works withTranscend’s Elite Data Management softwaresuite that allows you to customise what to backup. Oddly enough the drive didn’t come with the software, but you can find it onTranscend’s website as a free download.
The drive’s biggest feature is its lightweight design, where it weighs in at a very light 56 grams. Alongside its slip-on cover, the drive is ideal to be taken around in bags or even kept in your pocket.
The drive has a three-year warranty and doesn’t come with any hardware encryption, so make sure how you save your data. Also see:Best NAS drives.
Transcend ESD400K 256GB review: Performance
The ESD400K uses NAND flash in order to provide blistering fast SSD speeds. Through its USB 3.0, the drive is able to achieve a sequential read/write of 410.8/163.8MB/s – quite a bit lower than the manufacturer’s claims of 410/380MB/s, but impressive nonetheless.
Its 4K performance is good, although we would have liked to see better 4KB write speeds, where the Transcend fell short, where if you will be transferring small files to the drive on a regular basis, will find it to be painfully slaw versus other drives out there, such as theAdata SE730that runs on USB 3.1 (Gen 2), which has a 10Gb/s bandwidth speed, double that of USB 3.0 (or USB 3.1 Gen 1).
Looking at its overall performance and real-world usage, the drive has fast speeds, even when compared to other portable SSDs in the market, such as theSamsung Portable SSD T3. We would recommend it for every day use and as a means of efficiently backing up data.
