For those lucky enough to own one of the new Thunderbolt 5-equipped Macs, including the latest Macbook Pro and redesigned mac minithere are very few thunderbolt 5 External SSD to take full advantage of the new speeds. Lacie’s new rugged SSD PRO5 aims to solve that problem. But does it do so effectively?
Update 1/25: Following a reader’s recommendation, I’ve added the Amorphousdiskmark test to the “Performance” section.
The Lacie Rugged PRO5 SSD comes in two sizes, 2TB and 4TB, and is priced at $399.99 And $599.99,
Design and usability
The Lacie Rugged SSD PRO5 may be novel in terms of SSD interface technology, but its design doesn’t break new ground. If you’ve seen other rugged SSD models, you’ve seen this one – but it’s blue! I’d like to add that Lacie puts the designer’s name, Neil Poulton, on the bottom of the device, and I think that’s cool. Let’s celebrate product designers more.
The external SSD lives up to its name; It is rugged. The rubberized exterior, which makes the drive look and feel a bit like a toy, also makes it a total tank. The drive has IP68 protection against water and dust, is rated to survive nearly 10-foot drops, and can even be towed by a small vehicle. The IP68 rating means the drive can survive submersion in shallow water and can be safely cleaned if it gets dirty in the field.
By the way, while the new drive looks like the old one, the IP68 rating is new. The former Rugged SSD Pro was IP67-rated, which is still pretty good, but offers slightly less protection than IP68.
It’s also a pretty compact SSD despite the thick rubber casing. The Rugged SSD PRO5 weighs 150 grams (5.3 ounces) and measures 98 by 65 by 17 millimeters (3.9 by 2.6 by 0.7 inches). It’s not the tiniest SSD I’ve ever seen, not by a long shot, but it strikes a good balance between portability and durability and is small enough to slip into a pocket.
It wouldn’t be an external drive review without me commenting about the included cable. The Rugged SSD PRO5 ships with a Thunderbolt 5-certified cable, which is excellent, if not entirely expected. However, although the cable material seems fine, it is painfully short. This is a 0.3-meter cable (about a foot long). Some people prefer a super-short cable, so they should be pleased with this, even if I’m not.
We’ll get into this more in the next section, but it’s worth noting that external SSD design often informs performance in some important ways, particularly regarding heat. Making an external SSD durable and weather-resistant ensures that the heat is way more challenging to escape. This is a business. As we’ll see, the Lacie Bragged PRO5 SSD performs well, so it generally delivers the best of both worlds for many standard use cases.
Display
Lacie promises 6,700 MB/s read and 5,300 MB/s write speeds for its new Thunderbolt 5 SSD, provided the user is actually on Thunderbolt 5—the drive is, of course, backward compatible with pre-Thunderbolt specs. , such as those featured on the near-ubiquitous Thunderbolt 4 Apple Silicon Macs. As is often the case, these manufacturer-provided specs, formed in a lab outside of real-world scenarios, are impossible to meet.
However, the Lacie Thunderbolt 5 SSD delivers impressive speeds in the industry-standard Blackmagic Disk Speed ​​test and real-world file transfers.
All testing was conducted on an M4 Pro Mac mini, which has three rear Thunderbolt 5 ports. I used the cable that ships with the SSD.
Starting with the Blackmagic Disk Speed ​​test, the Rugged PRO5 SSD delivered 4,120.4 MB/s write speeds and 4,864 MB/s read speeds fresh out of the box. These are excellent numbers.
After filling the 2TB drive, leaving just enough space to run the tests, the drive showed some minor slowing down but nothing crazy. Write speeds dipped just below 4,000 MB/s, while read speeds dropped slightly to 4,746.8 MB/s.
After deleting everything from the drive for good measure, I restarted the tests, and speeds dropped a little more to 4,007.2 MB/s write and 4,617.9 MB/s read.
It’s all super fast, and much faster than a Thunderbolt 4 SSD. Speaking of Thunderbolt 4, what happens when you use the Lacie Rugged Pro 5 on a Thunderbolt 4 machine? To state the obvious, it is slow. However, it remains fast, delivering 1,700.1 MB/s write and 2,893.8 MB/s read speeds, basically the same as Lackey’s Rugged-Series Thunderbolt 4 SSDs.
However, there is something unusual to mention regarding the Blackmagic disk speed test results. At times, write speeds fell off a cliff during testing, dropping from a few hundred to thousands of MB/s. This will usually work itself out during subsequent test runs, but it’s worth noting, as it may impact users doing large file transfers – speed transfers a fair bit during a large data move. Can do. This only affected write speeds during my testing, as read speeds remained solid 100% of the time.
What about transferring big files, which can stress any SSD, especially a weather-sealed thermal one?
I transferred about 31GB of files from the Mac Mini’s internal SSD to the external SSD, and it was fast for the first 10-15 seconds and then slowed down a bit. Overall, write speeds worked out to about 3,300 MB/s and 3,170 MB/s for the two test runs. Once caching took effect, speeds jumped to 5,000 MB/s.
Another test run with a 260GB folder showed strong performance. The macOS Finder estimated it would take about six minutes because it started so quickly, but it ultimately took just eight minutes to transfer the entire batch of files. That’s still an impressive speed of 4,307 MB/s, which is faster than the drive performed in the Blackmagic Disk Speed ​​Test.
For a more standardized test of large data transfers, I used AmorphousDiskMark for a Lackey Rugged SSD Pro 5 using Thunderbolt 5. For a reference point, I also tested the most consistent and reliable drive I own, the Progress PG10. This Thunderbolt 4 SSD is quite expensive, but is specially designed to deliver extremely stable performance, no matter what. It lives up to that ambitious promise, as testing shows.
The Amorphousdiskmark results show what I would expect to see. The Lacie is super-fast with short transfers and takes a speed hit during extended, sustained use.
Throughout testing, and especially during large file transfers, the SSD became hot to the touch. I wouldn’t describe it as hot, and it was never uncomfortable, but it’s worth noting that when connected to your computer, the SSD will get hot.
Overall, the Lacie Rugged PRO5 SSD offers excellent performance. We haven’t tested any other Thunderbolt 5-equipped SSDs yet, but it will be interesting to see how they hold up to Lackey’s first effort. The drive isn’t the fastest drive I’ve seen, but it’s fast almost every time and it’s absolutely up to the task of real-time 8K video editing.
What are the options?
Thunderbolt 5 external SSD in scope? Not much. OWC’s Envoy Ultra Thunderbolt 5 SSDWhich, like the Lacie, comes in 2TB and 4TB capacities for $399.99 and $599.99, missed its original launch window, but is slated to start shipping next month. We’re very eager to review it, but it’s a safe bet that it will be a great SSD, like OWC’s other offerings. It also promises to be rugged and weather-resistant.
If one doesn’t explicitly need Thunderbolt 5, the options increase significantly. There are many great options in ourbest portable ssd“Guide, including the last generation Lackey rugged.
Should you buy it?
Yes, with a few caveats. The Lacie Bragged PRO5 SSD is good, but I think it’s worth waiting a bit to see how the OWC Envoy Ultra compares in terms of maximum speed and sustained performance. Thunderbolt 5 SSDs are direct competitors, so I’d like to see who wins the race. But if someone can’t wait and needs a Thunderbolt 5 SSD right now, you can’t go wrong with the Rugged Pro 5. It is a very good performer and is built to last.
