Seagate One Touch SSD review: A sharp customer
A tiny SSD that packs a proper performance punch for a modest outlay – if you opt for the 1TB version
-
+
Gorgeous design
-
+
Tiny footprint
-
+
Good value
-
-
Slightly disappointing random access speeds
Looks aren’t the most important thing when you’re shopping for storage, but they certainly don’t hurt. The One Touch SSD is, in our view, one of the most stylish drives we’ve seen, with a smart white trim, slate-grey finish and fabric side panels that are warm and pleasing to the touch.
It’s also tiny, measuring just 50 x 70mm, and it weighs a mere 74g. You could happily carry it around in a shirt pocket. And when it comes to performance the One Touch SSD punches above its weight, using a USB 3.2 Gen 2 connection to achieve very creditable sequential read and write speeds of 910MB/sec and 958MB/sec, respectively. It’s not quite the fastest contender on the market, but when it comes to transferring large files you’ll realistically get the same experience from this drive as from a rival using the same interface.
For random access performance, it’s a slightly different story. While the multithreaded AS SSD tests didn’t expose any particular weaknesses, the One Touch stumbled in the PCMark 10 storage benchmarks, ending up with a data drive score of 598 – the lowest of any SSD we’ve seen recently. We suspect that’s down to thermal throttling, since the small size of the drive affords little in the way of heat dissipation during intensive operations.
The One Touch SSD doesn’t support hardware encryption, but Seagate does provide its own backup software, along with a free one-year subscription to Mylio Create (a service that backs up and organises your photos) and a four-month trial of the Adobe Creative Cloud Photography plan. Perhaps more valuable is Seagate’s Rescue Data service: if your drive fails within its two-year warranty period, the company’s technicians will do their best to recover your data, something no other manufacturer will attempt.
The price is very fair too: the 1TB One Touch SSD can be had online for £110, equivalent to 12p per gigabyte. At that price you might wonder about moving up to the roomy 2TB model, but sadly that comes in at a much less attractive £305.
Some will be turned off by the One Touch SSD’s uneven performance: if you’re looking for a USB 3.2 Gen 2 drive that can maintain top speeds when the going gets tough, consider the SanDisk Extreme or the WD My Passport SSD. In our view, though, the One Touch is just more likeable than either of those drives, and it also happens to be terrific value.
Seagate One Touch SSD specifications
| Capacity | 1TB |
| Cost Per Gigabyte | 12p |
| Interface | USB 3.2 Gen 2 |
| Claimed Read | 1,030MB/sec |
| Claimed Write | 1,030MB/sec |
| Warranty | 2yr |
-
Salesforce says ‘Microsoft’s anticompetitive tying of Teams' harmed business in triumphant response to EU concessions agreementNews Microsoft has agreed to make versions of its Office solutions suite available without Teams – and at a reduced price
-
Healthcare organizations report rampant email security failures – and Microsoft 365 is often the weakest linkNews IT leaders say they're drowning in security alerts and missing real threats, thanks to limited resources, expanding attack surfaces, and weak security strategies
-
Is the honeymoon period over for Microsoft and OpenAI? Strained relations and deals with competitors spell trouble for the partnership that transformed the AI industryAnalysis Microsoft and OpenAI are slowly drifting apart as both forge closer ties with respective rivals and reevaluate their long-running partnership.
