Transcend JetDrive Lite 330 64GB MacBook Expansion Memory Card Review

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For those of you that have purchased or are planning on purchasing a MacBook Pro, adding storage capacity is something that leaves you with few options. Of course, you could carry around an external solution from any number of vendors, but those tend to get bulky for something that was design to be thin and lightweight.

The Transcend JetDrive 330 aims to curb this issue by offering 64GB of additional storage capacity via the internal SD slot on the MBP. Marketing specifications depict this drive as capable of 95 MB/s read and 60 MB/s write.

MSRP of the JetDrive Lite 330 in the 64GB flavor is listed at $59.99 with a lifetime warranty.

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Packaging for the JetDrive Lite 330 is rather elegant. We find marketing numbers at the top and an image of the card in the center.

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The back of the packaging carries a few details about the 330.

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Here we have our first look at the JetDrive Lite 330. As you can tell, it's a half-height SDXC card shaped to fit the MacBook Pro.

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Here you can see we installed it in our MacBook Pro Retina. The card sits quite well within the SD slot on the side. One thing to note is, since it does sit flat, it can be somewhat of a pain to remove.

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Here we have our first test in F.O.B. form. This includes the stock exFAT formatting the card comes with. As you can see, we touched 87 MB/s read and 62 MB/s write.

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Next up, we reformatted the drive with HFS+ file system to see if there was a performance difference using Apple's default file system. As you can see, we did lose some performance, with reads coming in at 88 MB/s and writes at 49 MB/s.

For those wanting to add capacity to their MBP, the JetDrive Lite 330 is one option that would work quite well. I really like the slim profile of the drive and the way it fits into the MacBook. Build quality of the drive was great as well; we had no issues during testing.

Performance of the JetDrive Lite 330 was decent, especially knowing this is really just an SD card purpose built for the MacBook. It does rival the read performance of a standard external hard drive, but of course, the trade-off is a much smaller package and less capacity.

The Transcend JetDrive Lite 330 in the 64GB capacity carries an MSRP of $59.99 with a lifetime warranty. Current market pricing can be found below.

PRICING: You can find the Transcend JetDrive Lite 330 for sale below. The prices listed are valid at the time of writing but can change at any time. Click the link to see the very latest pricing for the best deal.

United States: The Transcend JetDrive Lite 330 retails for $40.79 at Amazon.

Canada: The Transcend JetDrive Lite 330 retails for CDN$85.85 at Amazon Canada.

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