LaCie Mobile Drive 4TB Review

Name: LaCie Mobile Drive 4TB
Brand: LaCie

A portable solution that looks right at home next to your iMac or MacBook Pro!

VIEW GALLERY - 9

Tyler Bernath

In Loving Memory

Published May 7, 2019 10:00 AM CDT
Updated Nov 3, 2020 6:57 PM CST

Manufactured by LaCie

2 minutes & 45 seconds read time

TweakTown Rating: 81%

Our Verdict

If you need a great looking portable drive to sit next to your MacBook Pro, the LaCie Mobile Drive is one of the best options.

VIEW GALLERY - 9 IMAGES

Portable drives have become commonplace for users that want a quick backup, take data with them on the go or increase storage capacity on their notebook PC. While SSDs have become so cheap to produce, capacities above 1TB are still quite expensive, and thus the HDD lives on.

LaCie offers a broad range of solutions spanning from the Mobile drive through Rugged and into d2 and 2big,5big and 12big desktop platforms. The Mobile Drive in house today sits at the forefront of their portfolio as a moderately quick USB-C solution aimed at user that want a portable backup solution. This device is offered in 1,2,4 and 5TB capacities with two color options. The new enclosure design offers a unique diamond edge design that looks right at home next to your MacBook Pro.

Compatibility includes Windows along with macOS systems with USB-C. MSRP of the LaCie Mobile Drive 4TB comes in at $149.99 with a two-year warranty.

Packaging follows what we have seen from LaCie in the past. Capacity is listed at the top right along with performance.

The back goes into more detail and a drive diagram down below.

Included in the box we have a USB-C cable along with a Type-C to C cable.

The design of the drive is unlike anything I have seen thus far; the bottom left corner offers branding

Along the edge, we have the USB-C connector and LED for activity.

LaCie toolkit is a set of software that offers the ability to create backups, format the drive for Windows, etc.

The Mobile Drive comes formatted in exFAT for compatibility; if you intend to use it with macOS only, you can optimize the drive.

A quick run through performance with CDM and we see 148 MB/s read and 123 MB/s write.

I've always found it odd that LaCie would encroach into Seagate's Backup Plus territory with their own drives when apart from the external design the LaCie and Seagate are one in the same. This too is true with the Mobile Drive reviewed here today and the Backup+ Portable we have in the pipeline.

Build quality and finish is great with the Mobile Drive, the aluminum enclosure design with diamond edges certainly sets itself apart from all other on the market while the USB-C connectivity offers a wider range of compatibility with PC and Mac devices.

Performance is decent at 140 MB/s read, and 130 MB/s write, but I did note several instances with real-world data and occasionally with synthetics where the drive's performance would drop down to 50-60 MB/s for a short period.

In closing, the Mobile Drive from LaCie is a fantastic option for those needing high capacity portable storage with flair as you can get this same drive with square edges and a plastic enclosure $20 cheaper by purchasing the Backup+ Portable from Seagate.