Verbatim Pocket Drive 250GB review

The move to 2.5in hard disks allowed manufacturers to slim their external devices down considerably, and now a wave of 1.8in disks looks set to repeat that feat. The Verbatim Pocket Drive crams a 250GB disk inside a case just 90mm long, 64mm wide and little thicker than an iPhone.

It weighs a paltry 84g, making it one of the most pocketable drives we've used. It unsurprisingly features a single mini-USB port, with a matching cable in the box, and the only nod to design is a little row of dots that glow blue to indicate disk access. It immediately makes 2.5in drives – until now the paragon of slender portability – seem clunky by comparison.

The expected sacrifice comes in the form of performance. The sealed case means we can't see the specifics of the disk used, but our file transfer tests tell their own story. It read our 300MB of small files at 18.2MB/sec and a single 3GB file at 28.3MB/sec – both behind our recommended 2.5in Iomega eGo drive, but not by too much.

The real discrepancy arises when writing. While the Iomega eGo wrote 300MB of small files at 13.5MB/sec and one 3GB file at 29MB/sec, the little Verbatim managed just 4.7MB/sec and 23.4MB/sec respectively. With the hefty 250GB capacity, you'll be looking at long waits should you use this drive for backups or transferring your music collection.

Is it worth the premium? Well, at a massive 30p per gigabyte we'd have to say no. The tiny size certainly makes it easy to carry around, but a slightly larger 2.5in portable drive will transfer files at much faster rates, and it will do so at half that cost. As an example of the next big (or small) thing in external hard disks we like the Verbatim Pocket Drive, but we're not sure we'd actually pay for it yet.

Author: David Bayon