After plastic fantastic Toshiba finally
puts some pedal to the metal
Details
Price: $107.9
Manufacturer: Toshiba
Website: www.toshiba-multimedia.com/edu/
Required spec: Windows XP/VISTA/7, CPU with
750 MHz or faster, 10MB system hard disk space, 256MB system memory, one free
port of USB 3.0 or USB 2.0
I recently reviewed the Toshiba Stor.E
Edition, which I gave something of a difficult time for being cased entirely in
plastic. With the appearance on my desk of the Stor.E Steel S, I can see the
same concerns crossed the designers at Toshiba, which they addressed this
gorgeous all metal construction.
The metal on this drive is so highly
polished its possible to use it as a mirror, and Toshiba even provides a nice
leather pouch to keep it looking good and a cloth to keep it fingerprint free.
The performance of the drive is close to
what I’d expect from write speed of nearly 66MB/s and a read performance not
far from 70MB/s. An SSD is quicker, but for most people this is a big jump from
what they’d expect from the best USB 2.0 device, and it could easily make the
difference between making that commute journey home on time or not.
After
plastic fantastic Toshiba finally puts some pedal to the metal
As with the Stor.E Edition, Toshiba has
bundled the Burn Essentials package, which comes on the drive ready for you to
install from there. It also offers the same first year data recovery deal,
which is a major selling point of the Stor.E series for this writer.
The only downside I can detect to this over
its plastic brother is the additional weight that the metal case adds. The
Steel S weights about 190g, whereas the Edition was a good 50g less. That might
not seem much, but if you’re looking to reduce the overall weight you carry
around, it might be worth noting.
I have only one other concern and it’s
something that impacts the Stor.E Edition too. I’ve noticed a few people who’ve
been experiencing issues with these drives on some laptops that refuse to work
due to the 900mA that the unit draws. It’s possible to get a ‘Y’ connector that
steals power from another USB port, but Toshiba doesn’t include one as part of
the deal.
In terms of appearance, robustness and
general aesthetics, I like the Steel S much more than Toshiba’s Stor.E Edition.
The price isn’t substantially more, and you can get the bigger 1TB version of
the Steel S for around $150. Just be prepared to use the polishing cloth plenty
after you’ve touched it, if you want it to look its best at all times.
