Seagate Ultra Compact SSD (STMX1000400) review: small on the outside, big on the inside

Portable SSDs are fat metal or plastic rectangles with a USB-C port on them that take up slightly too much space on your desk and, as a result of needing a cable, look untidy. Well, not this one. Thanks to its slim shape and integrated plug, it looks more like a humble USB flash drive than an SSD with a transfer rate of up to 1,000 MB/s, and comes with a rubber casing and IP54 ingress protection so you can take it with you anywhere. But is it good enough to slot its way onto our list of the best external hard drives around?

Seagate Ultra Compact SSD review: Key specifications

Design and build

The Seagate Ultra Compact drive lives up to its name. It’s tiny, for an SSD, and we were able to go through our big box of forgotten bits and pull out a 32GB flash drive that was about the same size. If we’d dug deeper, there's probably a similarly shaped 128MB one somewhere near the bottom, its USB 2.0 connection woefully preparing it for the modern world. It’s noticeably smaller than the other portable SSDs we’ve reviewed on the Bloq, with the Kingston XS1000R the closest in size, yet still twice as big.

At 24g it’s also very light - the Crucial X9 is 32g - and is made from aluminium. There's a rubber cap to go over the USB-C plug, which isn’t retractable, and a further silicone sock to protect the rest of the drive, apart from the grooved top which is always exposed. This sock is soft and almost sticky and will attract dust and bits of fluff easily, annoying if you like to keep your computer accessories looking their best, or perhaps want to photograph them for some reason.

We’re promised that the drive's construction uses at least 35% recycled materials. It’s also durably built, with a 3m drop rating and IP54 dust and rain resistance. While you can’t drop it in the sea and expect it to work afterwards, it’s protected from water splashes and may survive being left on the lawn when the sprinklers activate.

Features

There's very little on the surface of the Seagate Ultra Compact SSD apart from a section you can loop a lanyard through - a small strap is included in the box, but it’s barely big enough to loop around your finger. Otherwise, a hole for an activity light is all that breaks the surface.

The use of a USB-C plug rather than a port for a cable gives the drive extra usefulness, as you can plug it straight into your phone or tablet if you need to (it comes formatted as exFAT so is pretty universal, but you’ll need to reformat it if you want to use it for Time Machine), but you’ll have to watch out if you’re using it on a mini PC or laptop that has its ports quite close together, as despite its slim profile it can clash with plugs inserted in neighbouring ports. If you plug it into the back of an iMac, it will stick straight out and potentially hit the wall if you’re prone to pushing your computer away from you, perhaps in disgust at something you’ve read online, and a short extension cable might help if this is an issue.

Seagate bundles the drive with a smattering of software, though it’s questionable just how much use much of it will be to creatives who will already have the apps they need. You get a Start Here app for Windows and Mac, which does nothing more than open a web page asking you to register the product and with tabs to download the Seagate Toolkit backup app and Mylio Photos image organisation library, and it pushes Dropbox too.

Performance

Inside the drive you get 1TB or 2TB of flash - there are no other capacities available at the time of writing. Seagate advertises a transfer rate of 1000MB/s and... that’s exactly what we get. In the Crystaldiskmark benchmark, it posted a read figure of 1053 MB/s and a write speed of 1027 MB/s, while in ATTO Disk Benchmark we saw 1005 MB/s reads and 1000 MB/s writes. This makes it faster in tests than the Kingston XS1000R, and about the same as the Crucial X9 and Seagate Game Drive.

This USB drive isn’t going to keep up with the new generation of Thunderbolt 5 SSDs that are just starting to emerge, but it’s a £110 portable unit, so that’s still pretty good. For comparison, the 32GB flash drive we pulled out of the bits box for a size comparison earlier managed 31 MB/s read and 6 MB/s write, while an SD card used in a mirrorless camera posted scores of 50 MB/s read and 42 MB/s write, so the Seagate SSD is a huge step up from other common USB storage solutions in terms of transfer speed.

Price

Priced at £109.99 at the time of writing, the Seagate Ultra Compact SSD is near the top of the sort of cost bracket you’d expect for a 1TB external SSD. You’ll pay a premium for such a small, metal-cased drive that can transfer data at a decent rate, and prices elsewhere are beginning to creep down and it’s possible to find them for less, or 2TB drives for not much more.

Who’s it for?

The Seagate Ultra Compact SSD was instantly recognised by an Android phone and an iPad Pro when we attached it to their USB-C ports, so it makes an excellent data transfer solution if you can’t wait for files to transfer through the cloud, or if you need to take large amounts of data with you. There are probably better daily backup drives available, but the Ultra Compact’s ability to disappear into a bag or pocket will mean it finds a wide range of uses.

Buy it if...

• You need fast storage
• Thunderbolt speeds don’t matter
• Portability is king

Don't buy it if...

• Thunderbolt speeds do matter
• Capacity greater than 2TB is required
• You just don’t like that USB-C plug sticking out

Also consider

Crucial X9: at creativebloq.com

A discreet and fast portable drive that’s reasonably priced and comes in capacities as high as 4TB.

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Sandisk Professional Pro-Blade Station: at creativebloq.com

A relatively expensive, niche system suited to creative professionals who need a high-speed, permanent desk-based storage solution that allows access to SanDisk’s excellent NVMe SSD Mag system.

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WD My Passport SSD: at creativebloq.com

A nippy little SSD that looks the part too, with neat styling and ultra-lightweight credentials, making it eminently portable.

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