Ultracompact external SSDs usually ask you to compromise—on speed, on capacity, or on convenience. The ADATA SC735 (starts at $189.99 for 1TB; $329.99 list for 2TB, as tested) tries to dodge those trade-offs by shrinking a USB 3.2 Gen 2 drive to thumb-drive proportions while keeping performance respectable and eliminating the cable entirely. With a built-in USB Type-C connector and support for direct iPhone video recording, it’s aimed at creators and travelers who value simplicity as much as speed. The SC735 is solid, but it lacks the hardware-based encryption of some of our top external drives, including our best overall pick, the Crucial X9 Pro, which also offers better ruggedization credentials and capacities up to 4TB.

Design: Tiny Yet Powerful, and No Cable Needed

The featherweight SC735 weighs just under half an ounce and measures just 0.5 by 1.1 by 2.2 inches (HWD)—about as long as a typical USB thumb drive and roughly twice as wide. It comes in your choice of two color schemes, dubbed blue and gray by ADATA. The "blue" version we reviewed is actually mostly black, with three diagonal blue stripes on top, along with the ADATA name and the word "SSD"—presumably, so you don't mistake the little thing for a thumb drive or dongle—in small white letters.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The "gray" version of the drive is similar, but the stripes are, as you'd figure, dark gray instead of blue. In either case, the drive's enclosure is made of textured plastic; it doesn't feel as sturdy as a metal case would, but it nonetheless meets the MIL-STD-810G 516.6 impact-resistance standard to survive 1.22-meter (4-foot) drops.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

On the bottom of the SC735, you'll find a sliding switch to extend or retract its USB plug, which locks into place once extended. To retract the plug, press the switch with your thumb and pull it back. I found the mechanism easy to manipulate.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The connector supports USB 3.2 Gen 2, which makes it compatible with Windows, macOS 10.6 or later, Linux Kernel 2.6 or later, Android 13 or later, or recent iPhones—in fact, most any device equipped with a USB Type-C port, including some gaming consoles. (You could plug the SC735 into a USB Type-A port by adding a female-to-male C-to-A adapter, but none is included.) The drive comes formatted in exFAT, but you can reformat it as needed.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

One of the SC735's big selling points is its handling of phone videos: You can store your movies directly to the drive as you shoot them. This is particularly useful for recording in Apple's ProRes format, which ravenously consumes space on the iPhone's drive. Apple switched from its Lightning connector to USB-C starting with the iPhone 15; I had no trouble connecting the SC735 to my iPhone 15 Pro.

(Credit: Tony Hoffman)

Pricing and Capacity: A Rising SSD Price Tide

As of this writing, the SC735 is available from ADATA at the prices shown in the table, in both its 1TB and 2TB capacities. It's a little on the pricey side for a drive of its capabilities, but within reason.

At this point, however, it's uncertain how much retailers will charge for it. What's more, the SSD market is in flux, with a NAND flash shortage pushing prices higher. Memory manufacturers are scrambling to meet the massively increased demand for chips from the AI cloud hyperscaler giants—and shifting their focus, to an extent, away from consumer SSD memory—so it is unclear how the SC735's retail pricing will shake out with the rest of the market a few months down the line. Industry analysts have predicted continued upward pressure on SSD pricing, at least into 2027. So if you want to buy the SC735, do it soon after it starts shipping rather than waiting for a price drop. You might be waiting a while.

ADATA did not build support for AES hardware-based encryption into the SC735, nor does it include backup software for this model. The company covers the product with a five-year warranty.

The Competition: Compact, Videography-Friendly SSDs

The SC735 isn't the only external solid-state drive that (somewhat) resembles a USB thumb drive while packing the performance of a full-fledged SSD. Some notable competitors match the SC735's USB 3.2 Gen 2 capability, built-in plug, and direct-recording capability. Some also offer advantages that the SC735 doesn't.

I reviewed the Seagate Ultra Compact SSD last April; with that four-star stick, the drive's aluminum casing is further protected by a removable rubberized sheath. The drive also includes the comprehensive Seagate Toolkit software, which supports backup, data sync, and 256-bit AES encryption.

The Editors' Choice-winning Lexar Professional Go SSD with Hub, primarily designed for iPhone videography, offers a detachable hub for connecting directly to multiple devices, such as a phone, microphone, and filming rig. The unit also resists dust and water, with an IP65 ingress protection rating; on the software side, it supports 256-bit AES hardware-based encryption via Lexar's DataShield solution.

Another Editors' Choice pick, the Corsair EX400U also lets you record ProRes video directly from an iPhone. But it adds a MagSafe connector that lets you magnetically attach it to the phone itself, and it supports the latest USB4 standard, which enables prodigious data-transfer speeds. At the same time, the EX400U has a conventional USB Type-C port, so you have to connect it to your phone via a cable. Corsair actually offers the drive for less than the SC735's pre-order price—pretty surprising, considering the EX400U's pluses.

Performance Testing: An On-Point Gen 2 Performer

We test most external SSDs using a PC Labs storage testbed built on an Asus Prime X299 Deluxe motherboard with an Intel Core i9-10980XE Extreme Edition CPU and an Nvidia GeForce graphics card. We use the motherboard's native 10Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2 port for testing most drives, including the ADATA SC735; for 20Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 drives, we use a Gen 2x2 port added via an Orico PCIe expansion card.

We subjected the SC735 to our usual suite of external solid-state-drive benchmarks: the Crystal DiskMark 6.0 throughput tests, the PCMark 10 data-drive benchmark (which aggregates an SSD’s speed results in performing a number of workaday storage tasks), the 3DMark Storage gaming test, Blackmagic's Disk Speed Test, and our own folder-transfer test.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

As the drive comes preformatted in exFAT, which is compatible with both Macs and Windows machines, we run the last two tests on an Apple MacBook Pro. We reformat to NTFS to run Crystal DiskMark, PCMark 10, and 3DMark on our Windows testbed. (Here's a closer look at our testing regimen for SSDs.)

The SC735's Windows test results were typical of the USB 3.2 Gen 2 drives in our comparison group. Its Crystal DiskMark sequential read and write scores were both in the middle of the pack. In PCMark 10, the SC735 placed third, behind the 8TB Sandisk Desk Drive (a much larger desktop SSD) and the Seagate Game Drive PS5 External SSD, and its 3DMark score was second-highest, behind the Desk Drive.

In our Mac-based testing, the SC735 achieved the highest write speed among our comparison group in the Blackmagic Disk Speed benchmark. But its read speed was the lowest.