Transcend StoreJet 25 Mobile: First Look

[ Music ] ^M00:00:02 >> Hey, I'm Justin Yu, Associate Editor for CNET.com giving you a first look at this external hard drive. It's the Transcend StoreJet 25 Mobile. Now, this hard drive really takes the tough guy approach and incorporates a ruggedized exterior to protect your data from drops, bumps or whatever other elements that can cause damage to it. Now, this one is a 320-gigabyte model, but they also offer 160, 250 and 500 gigabyte models as well. Now, the StoreJet 25 Mobile actually meets the US military's drop-test standards. The exterior is made with three layers of abuse protection. The first one wraps the drive in a tough silicone shell to withstand vibrations, the second one suspends the drive in a tight bracket, and the third one surrounds the entire drive with this thick rubber casing. Now, those three layers basically mean you can go nuts and abuse the driver as much as you want -- no, I'm actually kidding. Transcend and CNET actually recommend you don't just go around taking your anger out on this thing. It's tough, but there is a limit. Now, there are two other pros that secured our buying recommendation for this drive, cost per gigabyte and transfer speed. Now, we did the math for you and this $95 320-gig drive comes out to a very affordable 30 cents per gigabyte. In fact, it's the best deal out of any external drive we've tested so far. You're not going to be mad at this performance benchmarks either. It delivered a solid 29 megabytes per second to read and 24 megabytes per second to write across our 10GB data folder. And that's also quick enough to earn a first place ranking amongst four other competitive drives. So, needless to say we love the Transcend StoreJet Mobile. It's efficient combination of ruggedness, quick transfer speeds and cost savings definitely earned it the top spot in our labs. And if you're looking for a cheap way to back up your data, you should look no further than this device. I'm Justin Yu, and you just took a first look at the Transcend StoreJet 25 Mobile external hard drive. ^M00:01:52 [ Music ]