Pros & Cons
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- Fastest external SSD we have ever tested (based on Blackmagic benchmark)
- Highly resilient exterior
- Five-year warranty, plus subscription to data recovery service
- Includes LaCie Toolkit backup software
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- Pricey
- Requires computer with Thunderbolt 5 support for best results
LaCie Rugged SSD Pro5 4TB USB-C Portable Solid-State Drive Specs
| Capacity (Tested) | 4 |
| Interface (Computer Side) | Thunderbolt 5 |
| Internal Form Factor | Not Applicable |
| Internal or External | External |
| NVMe Support | |
| Rated Maximum Sequential Read | 6700 |
| Rated Maximum Sequential Write | 5300 |
| Warranty Length | 5 |
The LaCie Rugged SSD Pro5 (starts at $399.99 for 2TB; $599.99 for 4TB as tested) is a beast of a creator-centric external SSD. It is highly rugged, available in capacities up to 4TB, and is a great fit for Mac and Windows computers with Thunderbolt 5 ports. (You can use it on systems with earlier Thunderbolt versions, but at their ports' lower speeds.) The Pro5 is easily the fastest external SSD we have reviewed, based on its Blackmagic read/write benchmark scores. To be sure, it's expensive, but you get a top-notch product for the money. With blazing speed, impact resistance, and high capacity, it earns our Editors' Choice award for high-performance external SSDs.
Design and Build Quality: The Classic LaCie Rubberized Frame
With a rectangular form, rounded corners, and a rubberized full-body coat, the Pro5 hews to the classic LaCie rugged-drive look. (With one exception: It's blue, while most of its brethren are decked out in orange, save for the black LaCie Rugged SSD Pro.) Measuring 0.7 by 2.6 by 3.9 inches (HWD) and weighing 0.3 pound, it is small and light enough to fit into a pocket. The top bears the LaCie name and logo; on the bottom is product info in tiny type along with certifications. A nice touch is that it also includes the designer's name.
In the middle of one of the long sides is a USB-C port that supports Thunderbolt 5, the latest iteration of that standard. Also included is a Thunderbolt 5 cable.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)Connectivity: Thunderbolt 5 Is a Rare Bird
The LaCie Rugged SSD Pro5 is designed to take advantage of the latest iteration of the Thunderbolt connectivity standard when paired with compatible Mac and Windows computers, which started hitting the market in mid-2024. With throughput speeds of up to 80Gbps, it effectively doubles the maximum throughput over the previous generation, Thunderbolt 4.
Only recent Macs with either M4 Pro or M4 Max CPUs support Thunderbolt 5; Macs with plain M4 chips will not. In addition to the Thunderbolt 4 MacBook Pro that we typically use for testing external SSDs, we enlisted a 14-inch MacBook Pro model A3503, which has an M4 Pro CPU, for testing the Pro5 over a Thunderbolt 5 connection. Only a handful of Windows machines have hit the streets with Thunderbolt 5 support yet.
One thing to note is that although the Pro5 is compatible with pre-Thunderbolt 5 Macs, they must be running the latest version of the operating system, macOS 15 Sequoia, which was released last September. Before I became aware of this requirement, I connected the Pro5 to the Thunderbolt 4 port of a 2023 MacBook Pro laptop that we use as an external storage testbed to measure its speed over that connection, only to discover that neither Finder nor Disk Utility would even recognize that the LaCie drive was attached.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)After I upgraded our testbed's OS to Sequoia, the MacBook identified the Pro5 immediately. So if you plan to use the drive with any older Macs, be sure that they're upgraded to Sequoia. Also note that the LaCie may not work at all with some really old Macs (from 2017 and earlier).
Durability: Rugged to the Max
The Pro5 is one of the few SSDs we've reviewed to have received an ingress protection rating of IP68, the highest possible rating for imperviousness to water and dirt that a product can get. It's certified to be both dustproof (with complete protection against sand, dirt, and dust) and waterproof to a depth of 3 feet for up to 30 minutes. Only a few external drives we've reviewed, including the ADATA SD800 and SD810, can match this IP rating. The Pro5 has also been shown to survive drops of up to 3 meters (about 10 feet).
Price and Capacity: Living Large
The Pro5 is available in 2TB and 4TB capacities. The lack of a 1TB option makes sense, since videography and photography work can consume massive amounts of space. List prices are given below.
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Seagate covers the Pro5 with a five-year warranty, which for an external SSD is as good as you can get. You also get access to Seagate's Rescue Data Recovery Services and LaCie Toolkit backup software.
Describing the Pro5 as the industry's fastest scratch disk, LaCie gears the Pro5 to creative professionals such as photographers, videographers, and audio specialists, and notes that it enables real-time editing of 8K and 6K RAW footage. Although you can use the Pro5 at a workstation in a studio, the SSD's superior ruggedization lets you take it wherever you need to shoot without worrying about it taking a tumble or getting muddied.
Performance Testing: Blazing Fast at Serving Up Video Files
We put the LaCie Pro5 through our usual external solid-state drive benchmarks suite, including Crystal DiskMark 6.0, PCMark 10 Storage Overall, 3DMark Storage, Blackmagic's Disk Speed Test, and our folder transfer test. The first two are run on a PC with the drive formatted in NTFS, and the last two on a MacBook Pro using the Pro5's native exFAT format. (We used two different Macs for these tests, as described above.)
Crystal DiskMark's sequential speed tests provide a traditional measure of drive throughput, simulating best-case, straight-line transfers of large files. Meanwhile, the PCMark 10 Storage test measures an SSD's readiness for various everyday tasks.
The Pro5 is the first Thunderbolt 5 SSD we have tested; for comparison, we have included other Thunderbolt drives and models with USB4 and USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 connectivity.
The Pro5's sequential read and write speeds in Crystal DiskMark—run with the drive attached to our Windows testbed's USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 port—were typical of a Gen 2x2 drive. However, that connection does not permit anything like the full throughput of the Thunderbolt 5 standard, so the results are not indicative of its true capability.
The Blackmagic benchmark—which tests a drive's speed in reading and writing video files in different formats—is ideal for evaluating a creator-centric SSD such as the Pro5, and in that test its scores were easily the highest of any external SSD we have tested. The Pro5 completed our other Mac-based test—the folder transfer—in under a second, the same as all but one of the SSDs in our comparison group.
The Pro5 scored very well on the PCMark 10 Overall storage test, with only the two USB4 drives—the Oyen U34 Bolt and OWC Express 1M2—turning in better results. In the gaming-centric 3DMark Storage benchmark, the Pro5's results were middling.