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is a senior reporter who’s been covering and reviewing the latest gadgets and tech since 2006, but has loved all things electronic since he was a kid.
Neil Poulton succeeded in elevating the design of external drives two decades ago with the introduction of LaCie’s Rugged line, which features a bright orange bumper to protect data from drops. Today, Seagate announced an updated version of the LaCie Rugged Mini SSD with a few small design tweaks and a big boost to transfer speeds.
The drive is now called the LaCie Rugged SSD4 and is available starting today in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities (Seagate is dropping the 500MB option) for $134.99, $249.99, and $479.99, respectively.
The Rugged SSD4 is exactly the same size as its predecessor but now features a brushed aluminum finish and a centered USB-C port. It now supports transfer speeds up to 40Gbps with 4,000MB/s read speeds and 3,000MB/s write speeds. Seagate’s older Rugged Mini SSD had a USB-C port that was slightly off-center, a smoother aluminum finish, and read speeds that maxed out at 2,000MB/s.
The new drive isn’t quite as fast as the LaCie Rugged SSD Pro5 that was introduced earlier this year at CES with 6,700MB/s read and 5,300MB/s write speeds, but when it’s connected to a USB-C iPhone, the Rugged SSD4 is fast enough to capture ProRes 4K footage at 120fps.
As with the previous version, the new Rugged SSD4 has an IP54 rating against dust and water, but it’s definitely not waterproof so while splashes are okay, a complete dunking would not be. Its orange bumper also protects it from drops as high as nearly 10 feet, but that’s definitely not an invitation to casually toss it around.
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