When it comes to portable storage, there’s plenty of options out there and the most common go-to is the flash drive. Handy as they are, they simply just can’t match the speed and capacity offering of more traditional portable hard drives. Portable HDDs themselves though do fall when it comes to speed and for those looking for a balance of performance and capacity, only have one route to go to: portable SSDs. Few and far between, portable SSDs are offered in quite compact form factors, usually the size of a calling card but they’re performance are indeed top-notch. Given the current-gen offering of USB3.1, this makes it an excellent choice if you really need a portable option for storage but want it compact enough to carry around.
In today’s review we’ll take a look at the Apacer ASMini portable SSD. At barely the size of a palm, this little device bridges flash drive portability with SSD speed and capacity.
The Apacer AS Mini Portable follows the AS720 dual-interface drive in offering a portable solution offering SSD speeds with USB connectivity. The drive offers decent speeds for a USB device as well with a rating of 450/400MBs read/write performance. This is all via USB3.1 Type and while the drive itself includes a USB-A to USB-C cable, you can freely go ahead and use a Type-C-to-Type-C cable as well as Thunderbolt3-C cable.
Packaging for the Apacer ASMini is a simple, colored cardboard box with a cutout that lets buyers see the texture of the SSD inside. The packaging does resemble other Apacer products so do check the box first. The front of the AS Mini packaging has the model name, capacity and connection printed in gold. At the back we have some feature breakdown as well as a chart showing the strong points of the AS Mini SSD.
The Apacer ASMini package includes the drive itself, a USB Type-A to Type-C cable and some documentation.
The drive is indeed smaller than a traditional 2.5″ SSD. At (W)54 x (L)81 x (H) 6 mm, it’s just credit-card sized and at 6mm quite thin as well. It features a single Type-C port and as mentioned you can use other cables as well as long as one end supports Type-C.
User Experience & Conclusion
Testing out the potential performance we can get from this drive, we plugged it in our USB3.1 system and I’m a bit impressed by how conservative Apacer is rating the ASMini. We get read/write performance of around 460MB/s read/write and that’s a touch above the 450/400MB/s rating on the box. Usage may diminish performance to the printed rating but if you don’t write frequently on the drive, I’m sure you can make it last.
The Apacer ASMini is a very situational product. It’s not something you’d want if you just need storage and its not something you’ll need if you’re just after portability. Its that mix of speed, capacity and size that is definitely the draw here and if you need that on the go, this is certainly a good option. Situations like content creation on-field, or multimedia professionals as well as industry professionals needing to transfer large files or use them in-field, this is where the Apacer ASMini stands out. In our case, we used the ASMini as an external bootdrive, allowing us to easily switch between OS for test purposes.
So if you’re looking for a high-speed yet compact storage solution for mostly professional work, the Apacer ASMini SSD is certainly a great choice. Pricing for the drive is currently unannounced but our estimate puts it at around $99 for the 240GB. It might be a tad bit pricey than a standard 1TB portable HDD but at nearly 6x the speed of traditional drives, those needing to move things around fast may see the work in that.
As mentioned, this product is quite niche and the usage scenario quite focused in certain scenarios but if you’re a professional needing to work with large data on the go and time is of the essence, this is a great solution. Being compact is just a bonus.
