When looking at, say, a Seagate STGY80000, you might be turned away by its obvious size. Maybe you have a small desk. Maybe you’d like to carry about extra storage rather than lugging a near 3 lb hard drive in your backpack. You need the best external hard drives for travel—something slim and light. That’s the Maxone Ultra Slim Portable Hard Drives.
Why We Like It – Maxone Ultra Slim
The slimmest hard drive on our list, this little number is both portable and reliable, with the added benefit of having large storage space of 1TB (up to 2TB). It’s perfect for consoles!
- Reliable transfer speeds
- Great for Xbox One, PS4
- Slimmest and lightest on list
- Transfer speeds are only above average
- Requires reformat with Mac OS
Performance
When it came to transfer speeds, we have to admit that the Maxone Ultra Slim Portable External Hard Drives didn’t really impress. Its read write speeds were only ever above average, which tends to be around 130MB/s. The Maxone had an average of 150MB/s. What it did impress us with was how consistent it was. It rarely dipped below 150MB/s, which is more than most hard drives can say. That’s still 30MB/s above a Seagate Backup Plus, a competitor of the Maxone Ultra Slim. Use the USB 3.0 interface and you can experience transfer speeds as fast as 5Gbit/s. If you are a film maker looking for a tough hard drive with speeds of up to 950MB/s, click the Lacie rugged review.
Design
As mentioned before, this hard disk is slim and light in nature—the lightest and slimmest on our list, in fact. For comparison, both the Western Digital Elements External Hard Drive and Toshiba Canvio Basics are slim, yes, but also a bit on the bulky side. The Maxone Ultra Slim is nearly half as thin. It comes in three different colors: gold, charcoal grey, and rose pink. Along the edge you’ll find USB 3.0 hardware interface, compatible with USB 2.0 as well.
Value
Is the Maxone Ultra Slim Hard Drive worth the hardware components and metal? It’s certainly priced right, costing almost as much as our top three entries—so, you’re getting great price per gigabyte. If you need additional storage for your laptop, this is perfect; it’s slim and easily fits in a laptop bag. For gamers, the hard drive is quiet and doesn’t overheat. It doesn’t need additional software or external power, making it ideal for your PC setup—though Mac users will have to reformat. All that considered, performance and design, we’d say it has our seal of great value.
Maxone Ultra Slim Wrap Up
The Maxone Ultra Slim Hard Drive gets by for being reliable, slim and light. It has large storage options, works well under a workload, and is accommodating to different systems like consoles and computers. Mac OS users will, unfortunately, reformat before use, but that’s a simple process; otherwise you’re getting a great plug-and-play hard drive for personal use.
