Very recently we took a long hard look at the LaCie Mobile SSD series and walked away very impressed with it had to offer well-heeled consumers who demanded style and performance from their latest external storage purchase. The two main issues though are the fact that you do pay a premium for all that performance… and you do not get much capacity. Even the largest, and costly, LaCie Mobile SSD model tops out at ‘only’ 2TB. For some that is simply not enough space no matter the cost. Today we will be paying close attention to the LaCie Mobile Drive series. Specifically, the Apple Exclusive ‘Space Gray’ 5TB variant of the LaCie Mobile Drive series, which as the name suggests a lot more capacity than the Mobile SSD series. Interestingly enough while the Space Gray variant is an Apple Exclusive the ‘Moon Silver’ variants are not. While the non-Apple Exclusive 5TB model will set buyers back about $170 (MSRP) the Apple Exclusive will only set buyers back $160 USD! Needless to say, the usual ‘Apple Tax’ is not going to be a determining factor with this new model.
Lack of Apple Tax or not, there are numerous other 5TB external hard disk drive models on the market. Even excluding ‘desktop’ 3.5-inch variants… the LaCie Mobile Drive 5TB is on the middle to upper end of the price spectrum. To counteract this is a few things going in the LaCie Mobile Drive 5TB’s favor. First is, as LaCie is a Seagate subsidiary, we have little doubts on which hard disk drive is used in this series: the ubiquitous (for 5TB external 2.5-inch storage devices) Seagate BarraCuda Mobile ST5000LM000. This is a very peppy drive with known good performance. We also have little concerns over the styling and durability – both of are synonymous with LaCie branded models. Lastly, is the inclusion of not only a free month of full access to Adobe Creative Cloud, but also free data recovery for the warranty period of the drive. No, the real question is whether or not all the various ingredients used in this new LaCie drive can combine to create a great value.
So with this in mind, we will not only be going over what makes this drive tick, but comparing and contrasting it against a comparably sized model from the competition – the Silicon Power Armor A85M. A series which is also meant for the Apple ecosystem using buyer and a fairly typical example of what the competition has to offer.
