I tested the LaCie Rugged SSD4 - and it's blindingly quick, I found that speed comes at a cost

Considering the price, it's disappointing that LaCie never considered where the port plug and cable would reside. What you don’t get for the outlay is a lot of software, but you do get performance if you have the ports to exploit it.

• +

  USB 4 support

• +

  Tough and compact

• +

  Has hardware encryption

• -

  Overpriced

• -

  No USB-A cable adapter included

• -

  The port cover is easily lost

• -

  No firmware updates

One-minute review

LaCie has many similar-looking external drives that are hard to differentiate due to their similar names and promotional images, so determining this one from the others isn’t easy.

They all have an orange bumper that makes them look like inflatable life rafts, although this feature does provide additional protection from being dropped from up to 2 meters.

About the size of an old cigarette packet, the LaCie Rugged SSD4 is functionally identical to the Rugged Mini (STMF2000400), but ...