Iomega SSD Flash review

USB 3 external hard drives have become an increasingly common sight in recent months, however Iomega’s offering stands out as it’s the first we’ve seen to use SSD technology, instead of a good, old fashioned mechanical disk.

Physically it’s very slick, coated in cool to the touch black aluminium and barely there branding. And with diminutive measurements of 27.2 x 43.5 x 3.7 (WDH) and a low weight of just 112g, it’s comparatively portable too.

As with all other USB 3 drives it’s backwards compatible with USB 2 and also comes with a handy double-headed connection wire for both USB 3 and 2 connection, so you don’t need to remember to carry both types around with you. A nice touch.

In our large file read test it registered a scorching result of 115MB/sec. That not only eclipses the scores of other USB 3 portables we’ve tested, but surprisingly left it snapping at the heels of our A-listed desktop drives too.

Results were excellent in our small file test, an average of 65MB/sec comfortably surpassing our A-Listed portable, the Iomega eGo 500GB.

Write speeds were a little less impressive, with the SSD Flash posting a large file speed of 69MB/sec and a small file speed of 40MB/sec. Both scores are average among the portables we’ve tested.

So it’s fast, but the big problem for this particular product is value, or rather the lack of it in this case. With 64GB of storage and a price of £139 exc VAT, the price per GB works out at a huge £2.17; in our last hard disks Labs the highest price per GB for a USB 3 hard disk was 16.8p.

Alas, neither the speed nor added resilience that an SSD-based flash drive brings with it can justify such an exorbitant price premium. It's simply too expensive.

Author: Luke Sampson