It comes as no surprise that SATA based SSDs still offer significantly better transfer rates compared to drives using the USB interface but our discoveries for this review have been quite surprising.

Hynundai’s HS2 with its USB 3.0 interface may not have been able to match the performance of the Samsung 840 EVO but this is clearly a limitation of using USB for connectivity. Having the drive portable means this compromise has to be expected. What is more surprising is the comparison to another USB 3.0 drive which doesn’t have an SSD under the hood. The HS2 blew our Samsung S3 USB 3.0 drive out of the water, showing that having super-fast MLC NAND flash and an SSD controller has key advantages when it comes to read and write transfer rates.



So where do the benefits lie with choosing a USB 3.0 based portable SSD? Well, as mentioned above there are clear speed advantages of using such a drive, data will pass between the computer and drive much quicker than a conventional USB 3.0 drive. The other benefits are the durability and power usage. Having an SSD underneath the cover means that accidental drops will not affect the drive, whereas conventional drives could be affected by such an incident. SSDs also have a proven track record for longevity, with a much lower failure rate. HS2 also uses 0.04w whilst the drive is active compared to 4.5W which the Samsung S3 portable drive draws when active.

The price for HS2 will vary depending on the size of drive you choose but our 128GB model can be found for £120. Where SATA SSD has now moved far away from £1 per GB, USB SSD still has some work to do and comparing this to a standard USB drive the gap is quite large. A 1TB USB drive can be found for as little as £50 nowadays, a USB SSD like HS2 will cost in the region of £600. It all boils down to how important transfer rates, reliability and power consumption really is, with any new technology like external SSDs, the initial price will be quite high but we are hoping that over time the cost will drop to make this investment more appealing to the average consumer.

Hyundai’s HS2 external SSD offers key advantages over the conventional USB storage drive. The transfer rates are substantially better, power usage is much lower and the bonus of reliability is of course inherent with this drive being solid state. If you are after super-fast portable data storage and need reliability HS2 is definitely worth a look.