Transcend 1TB External SSD ESD310C USB 10Gbps

Pros

• Ultra-compact and just 11g
• Excellent read and write speeds
• No need for cables or adapters

Cons

• Classic desig

The ESD310C is a portable SSD that's barely the size of a USB stick and weighs just a few grams! Here's our test of an SSD you can take anywhere without worrying too much...

Overview

After a very fast and well-protected ESD3080C, Transcend is moving into a different territory with the ESD310C. At the time of writing, it's the most compact portable SSD on the market! It comes in capacities ranging from 256 GB to 2 TB. We're testing the 1TB version, priced at around €90. The manufacturer claims speeds of 1050 MB/s read and 950 MB/s write. Let's see what our measurements reveal in practice...

Size

We've been breaking compactness records lately, with manufacturers taking advantage of recent storage iovations to reduce the size of their portable SSDs. If the slimness of the classic WD My Passport wasn't enough, or Corsair's EX100U still wasn't compact sufficient despite its 7.9 x 3.7 cm, you caow turn to the Transcend ESD310C, which hits the mark and is the overall size of a USB flash drive. It measures 7.1 cm, is barely 2 cm wide, and weighs just 11 g! Given its size, it's hard to beat in terms of space and ease of transport.

The design isn't much more sophisticated than that, with its black color and lettering, but the structure appears solid and rigid. A silver version is also available. At each end, a plastic-capped end cap conceals a USB-A coector on one side and a USB-C on the other. Convenient for coecting the SSD anywhere; no need for cables or adapters!

The ESD310C comes with a 5-year warranty.

Performance

As we said in the introduction, Transcend claims read speeds of 1050 MB/s and write speeds of 950 MB/s, which is the norm for portable SSDs. On CrystalDiskMark, the ESD310C does even better than this, with an average of 1060 MB/s read and 995 MB/s write. This is certainly different from USB-C 3.2 Gen 2x2-compatible SSDs, which sometimes exceed 1,500 MB/s on the same test, but we remind you that these speeds are theoretical and more limited in practice.

When copying a large file manually, the SSD reaches 918 MB/s in read mode and doesn't lose so much speed in write mode, with 807 MB/s recorded. An excellent result that places it among the best SSDs of the moment. When it comes to copying a multitude of photo files, which is generally more tedious, the ESD310C did very well on the read side (904 MB/s) but lagged a little further behind on the write side - which is typical for this test: we noted 633 MB/s this time. This is still an excellent data rate and one of the best obtained to date.

Conclusion

When you're looking for a portable SSD, you're usually looking for a model that's both fast and easy to transport. The ESD310C perfectly matches these two criteria. Transcend has succeeded in designing a model that's as compact as fast - its transfer speeds are among the best available. A faultless performance!