Why You Can Trust CNET Silicon Power Armor A15 review: Superfast portable storage for rough environments
Looking for a superfast portable drive that's also rugged? The Silicon Power Armor A15 is the answer.
Silicon Power's new Armor A15 portable drive is not a replacement of but a companion to the company's previous Armor A80 portable drive that came out last year. The new drive offers protection against shocks but is not designed to be waterproof, which the Armor A80 was.
.jpg?auto=webp&width=768)
Silicon Power Armor A15
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
Similar to its brother, the new Armor A15 is very fast, compact, bus-powered, and meets the U.S. military's MIL-STD-810F drop-test standards. It also comes with a one-touch backup button and has a shock-absorbent silica gel cover to protect the internal drive from vibrations and shock.
Though the new one-touch button and the included SP Widget software are essentially just gimmicks, at the current price of just $90 for 1TB (or $75 for 500GB), the new Silicon Power Armor A15 is still an excellent portable storage choice, especially for those working in rough environments. General users should also check out the alternatives on this list for more options on design and storage space.
| Drive type | 2.5-inch external USB hard drive |
| Connector options | USB 3.0, USB 2.0 |
| Available capacities | 500GB, 1TB |
| Capacity of test unit | 1TB |
| Special features | MIL-STD-810F ruggedness compliance |
| Dimensions (LWH) | 5.4 x 3.2 x 0.8 |
| Weight | .55 lb |
| OSes supported | Windows XP or later, Mac OS 10.5 or later |
| Software included | SP Widget |
| Service and support | 3-year warranty |
Design and features
The new Armor A15 drive looks somewhat like the LaCie Rugged portable drive thanks to its shock-absorbent silica gel chassis. Measuring 5.4 inches by 3.2 inches by 0.8 inch and weighing half a pound, the drive is still very compact and light.
On one end it has a Micro-USB 3.0 port, which is used for both data and power. Bus power is a common feature for most portable drives and makes the storage device more convenient to use on the go. The Armor A15 includes a USB 3.0 cord in the package, which is all you need. In my trial, the drive also worked with USB 2.0, but if you want to get the the most out of it performance-wise, USB 3.0 is recommended.
On top, at the same end as the USB 3.0 port, the drive has a small button, which works as an indicator light and also supposedly starts a backup job. Unfortunately, there's no instructions on how it works or how to configure it, so most users won't see anything happen when this button is pressed. It seems that the button works with the SP Widget software that you need to first download from Silicon Power, then copy the executable file on the portable drive, and then run the file from there. This is a rather awkward process that could be avoided easily if the Armor A15 just came with the file preloaded on it.
The SP Widget itself supposedly offers a few backup and security features for the Armor A15 but in my testing, it was too poorly designed and buggy to be even usable. In the end I concluded that you should use the Armor A15 without the software at all.
Like the Armor A80, the new Armor A15 is designed to meet the US MIL-STD-810F ruggedness standard. This means it has enough protection to survive drops from up to 4 feet during transit on a hard surface. Note that US MIL-STD-810F is a rather low grade of ruggedness; the Armor A15 is not supposed to survive heavy abuse, like the Rugged Portable from ioSafe is.
As far as setting up the Armor A15, there's nothing to it. Out of the box, it's reformatted in FAT32, meaning it will work immediately when plugged into a Windows or Mac computer. FAT32, however, doesn't allow storage of files that are larger than 4GB each. If you want to carry large files, such as HD movies, you will need to reformat the drive into either NTFS or HFS+, but then the drive will work with only Windows or Mac, respectively. The formatting is a very simple task and took just a few second in my trial.
As with the Armor A80, I tested the Armor A15 both with USB 3.0 and USB 2.0, and it did very well in both.
With USB 3.0 the drive registered 113MBps and 112MBps for writing and reading, respectively, topping the charts. When used with USB 2.0, the drive's speed was about average for USB 2.0-based portable drives, scoring 26MBps and 33MBps for writing and reading, respectively, slightly below the average.
The drive worked well during my testing and remained cool and quiet the whole time.
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
 | Read | | Write |
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
| Read | | Write |
Conclusion
Though it doesn't quite live up to Silicon Power's goal of being a rugged portable backup solution, the Armor A15's superfast speed and affordable pricing are enough to make it an excellent buy.