Review: Transcend ESD250C 240GB USB Type-C Portable SSD

USB-C portable SSD isn’t as common as its type-A counterpart, but it offers better convenience in terms of connectivity and faster transfer speed. The Transcend ESD250C we have here today is one of the USB-C portable SSD available in the market, but let’s keep the intro short for now and see what kind of performance can we expect from the Transcend ESD250C.

Specifications

Unboxing

Starting off with the packaging, Transcend always keep things simple for its product and the ESD250C is no exception to that. At the front of the box, you’ll find a cutout and a protective layer of hard plastic for product display. Features and the capacity of the SSD can be found at the front of the box as well.

Other than the QR code and 3-year limited warranty, you won’t find much information at the back of the box. You can, however, scan the QR code which will lead you to the product page in case if you wish to learn more about it.

Accessories

Inside the box, you’ll find the product catalog – as usual, a USB type-A to type-C, a USB type-C to type-C data cable, and the Transcend ESD250C 240GB.

The Transcend ESD250C

The Transcend ESD250C comes with a sleek, sturdy but lightweight aluminum enclosure with a thinness of 7.5mm and weighing at only 47g. Its pocketable design doesn’t take up a lot of space and easy to carry around in a small pocket, which makes it a great option for those who need a fast and portable storage device on the go.

You can find a label sticker on the other side of the enclosure, which shows the model name, operating voltage and the serial number of the product. While Transcend never specifically mention that removing this label will void the warranty, we don’t recommend removing it even if you prefer to have a cleaner look for the ESD250C without the label sticker.

The ESD250C features a USB type-C interface that supports not only high-speed data transfer of up to 520 MB/s read and 460 MB/s write but also compatibility for both Windows and Mac OS operating system, as well as USB OTG for supported Android devices.

Synthetic Benchmark

ATTO Disk Benchmark

The most frequently used benchmarking utility by many manufacturers for performance specification. As ATTO Disk Benchmark uses compressible data rather than compressible data, it results in higher benchmark scores. We’ve run the benchmark with transfer size ranged from 0.5KB to 8192KB and a total length of the test to be 256MB.

AS SSD Benchmark

Widely used SSD benchmarking utility that uses incompressible data to simulate the worst possible scenario for an SSD and thus giving a much lower sequential read and write speed result than what has been stated by the manufacturer as a result of the heavy workload.

Both tests result show that we’re able to achieve the advertised 520 MB/s read and 460 MB/s write with the ESD250C, slightly higher in some case. The difference isn’t much of course, but we can say that the performance is about the same as most SATA III SSD you’ll find in the market now.

File Transfer Test

For this test, we’ll be using different types of data that we’re dealing with every day – image, video, compressed file, etc just to see how will it perform.

300 MB/s is about the highest read and write speed we’re able to achieve with the ESD250C. Although it’s not exactly the same as the advertised speed, it’s still at least 100 MB/s faster than most of the portable SSD that is still based on the USB 3.1 Gen 1 (formerly known as USB 3.0).

300 MB/s might be the peak performance we’re able to achieve with our system, but the type of data, storage device, and interface used plays an equally important role that will affect the performance overall. If you’re copying the data from or to a mechanical hard drive, 200 MB/s is probably the highest you can reach on both the read an write speed.

Final Thoughts

Other than the proprietary software which is optional to most, the ESD250C performs great and it’s ready for use right out of the box. No additional driver installation is required and the detection is almost instant when you connect it to your PC running on Windows or Mac OS. This goes the same to Android devices that support the USB OTG function.

While it’s not the most affordable portable SSD around – retailed at $69.99, the Transcend ESD250C is still a pretty good portable SSD one can have. We take a liking to the ESD250C, not just because of the transfer speed, but also its ease of carrying. It’ll slide in and fit into most pocket size without any issue, and it looks less awkward in the pocket of your pants, thanks to its slim design.

Pros

• Compact design for ease of carrying
• Solid and sturdy enclosure
• USB Type-C to Type-C cable for USB OTG is included
• Backed by 3-year limited warranty from Transcend

Cons

• The enclosure gets hot under load
• Doesn’t support SSD lock/unlock feature in Transcend Elite software