Portable SSDs made their way readily as portable storage devices especially for individuals who prefer the size advantage of the SSDs versus their disk counterpart. Performance is also a key factor as there is an emerging market for cameras supporting external storage devices which has been one of the strongpoint for certain brands as of late. Regardless, performance has been its main selling point and to offset pricing, portable SSDs have been married to more premium offerings, with brands giving them status symbol casings made of premium metal or other materials. Today, we’ll be taking a look at the TeamGroup PD400 SSD. The PD400 is the more mainstream of TeamGroup’s portable SSD offerings and at just around $100, the 1TB PD400 is definitely looking interesting.
Specification and Features
- Meticulous texture with a warm touch. Unique Navy blue appearance.
- The PD400 is compatible with Windows PCs, MAC OS, Android devices laptops and desktops.
- Water Repellent, dust proof (IP66)[1], shock proof, and pressure resistant.
- USB 3.1 Gen1 high-speed transfer.
- SSD is good value compared to hard disk drive.
- Support UASP.
- 3-year product warranty with free technical support service.
Packaging and Closer Look
TeamGroup packages the PD400 in their standard packaging style: gloss cardboard with the model printed at the front. Capacity is also printed in bold letter as well as a warranty highlight that indicates this products 3-year warranty. At the back we have a brief of the specs as well as words and things in multiple languages.
If this feels or sounds brief, it is. TeamGroup has made the package as light as possible and as you can see, inside the package we have the basic bundle of the PD400 SSD itself and a pair of USB cables: an end-to-end USB type-C cable and a USB type A to Type C cable. Both cables are braided and are fairly short for portability.
TeamGroup’s PD400 looks and feels very elegant in hand. Do note that this is still a mid-market product from TeamGroup but its casing is quite decent. Team lists the product as dustproof and water-repellent so don’t let the chassis deceive you.
As mentioned, the product is not fully waterproof and the USB Type C port still requires a port cover which is easily lost. So easy in fact, it got lost minutes right after this photo was taken and for that I apologize.
Performance Testing
Test Setup
Processor: Intel Core i9 9900K
Motherboard: ASUS ROG MAXIMUS XI EXTREME
Memory: G.Skill TridentZ DDR4-3600 16GB
Storage: WD Blue SSD 1TB SATA
PSU: Seasonic Platinum 1050w
Cooling: Fractal Design Celsius S36 AIO Liquid cooler
Monitor: Viewsonic VX2475smhl-4K
VGA: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti FE
Potential Performance (ATTO Disk Benchmark)
ATTO Disk Benchmark benchmarks a drive’s read and write speeds with increasing file sizes and graphs them. The results shows us a good idea of how the drive performs on file sizes, showing us read and write speeds and how consistent they are. The higher the better of course and the the more consistent the numbers, the better. This also shows us if bottlenecks exist for either the controller or the device itself.
Anvil Storage Utilities
Anvil Storage Utilities is a disk benchmarking utility designed to offers a simpler method of scoring a storage device’s performance for both read and write as well as overall. The scores are presented in scores from the benchmark window and are representative of the score of the drives but are completely unique to this benchmark alone. Higher scores are better.
AS SSD Benchmark
AS SSD benchmarks SSDs and provides a score. In our charts, we’ll show you the bandwidth performance results instead, specifically for Sequential and 4K . AS SSD uses synthetic read/write tests with selectable test size. Our standard test uses 1GB sample data.
Crystal Disk Mark v6
Crystal Disk Mark is storage benchmarking software was developed by “hiyohiyo” of Japan, and is available for free. This benchmark measures sequential, and random read/write speeds of storage devices.
ez IOmeter
ezIOmeter is a user-friendly port of the popular IOmeter benchmark. IOmeter is a professional load testing tool for measuring storage performance for enterprise solutions.
Conclusion
In the portable SSD scene, everything is going to be compared to the Samsung T5 but depending on where you’re coming from, in the more consumer-friendly space, WD also has presence for mobile SSDs. That said, most of the players in this space in our part of Asia is dominated by Taiwanese brands. Earlier models we’ve tested like the Apacer ASmini showed promise for its time and the TeamGroup PD400 shows how far we’ve come in terms of price and capacity.
TeamGroup’s PD400 offers excellent capacity for the price and certainly miles apart from the Samsung. Also, the PD400 also has an elegant yet sturdy chassis, good enough for use on your run-and-gun shooting rig or to the other extreme, at your office desk. The performance is decent for its type and at around 500MB/s transfer rate, the drive is easily a remove SATAIII drive. Excellent sequential performance for large data files and decent small file writes make it a great partner for mobile work or quick transfers for collaboration work. The PD400 is definitely a great work partner.
At the end of the day though, at retail, price is definitely on the side of TeamGroup but when posted on sale a Seagate or WD option may be side-by-side and that presents a very, very tough competition for the PD400. But that’s only during sale season. As it stands, the TeamGroup PD400 offers excellent performance and quality for its price and for professionals looking at heavy usage, its more accessible price makes it an easy go-to for a quick stockpile or replacements but you do get a 3-year warranty if it acts up prematurely.
TeamGroup backs the PD400 with a 3-year warranty. We give it our B2G Best Value Award!
