ADATA SE730H External SSD Review

Rugged, portable, and trendy, external solid-state drives (SSDs) are the obvious path these days to netting fast extra storage for your PC or Mac.

And although it's not nearly the household name that SSD giant Samsung is, ADATA offers external drives that compete with the storage big-leaguers at aggressive prices.

A refresh of the ADATA SE730 we reviewed two years ago, the ADATA SE730H ($149.99 for the 512GB version we tested) introduces USB-C-to-USB-C data transfers with a potential ceiling of 10Gbps, over a USB 3.1 Gen 2 connection.

It's compact, it's waterproof, and—best of all—it's fast, if not much faster than your typical external SSD.

And, for the amount of storage space you're getting, it costs less than the 500GB version of our Editors' Choice, the Samsung Portable SSD T5 ($164.99).

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Speed in a Slick Shell

Outfitted with a red, textured-metal finish (it also comes in gold), the ADATA SE730H I reviewed feels premium but, at just 1.12 ounces, weighs very little.

It measures 0.4 by 1.7 by 2.8 inches (HWD), small enough to fit in almost any pocket without the USB-C cable attached.

You uncap the left side of the drive to reveal a USB Type-C port, which is positioned alongside an activity light.

The face of the drive is inscribed with the words "ADATA" and "SSD" in two different font styles.

In a sense, this clashes with the minimalist design the SE730H is going for.

Nevertheless, it is smaller and lighter than the 0.4-by-2.3-by-3-inch (HWD), 1.8-ounce Samsung T5.

The storage-capacity options are limited to two: 256GB or 512GB.

You can buy the 256GB model for $89.99, while the 512GB version is priced lower per gigabyte, at $149.99.

With either model, the SE730H is backed by a three-year warranty.

Out of the box, the ADATA SE730H is formatted for NTFS; writing to it, as is, is limited to Windows computers.

If you're on a Mac running macOS 10.13 High Sierra or later, you can reformat it to APFS (Apple File System) or exFAT to read from and write to the drive.

Those of you running legacy versions of macOS can format the drive in the HFS+ system Apple used on its computers until 2017.

And users who dabble in both Windows and macOS are best off using exFAT, since its read/write capabilities extend to both operating systems.

Before you format the drive, though, make sure you copy off the two pre-loaded Windows applications—OStoGo and HDDtoGo—onto a Windows machine if you need them.

OStoGo is ADATA's own alternative to the Windows 10 Media Creation tool, letting you install Windows from a USB storage device like this one, while HDDtoGo allows you to back up files to or restore them from an external drive.

With the SE730H, ADATA employs 3D NAND technology at the core level, meaning its memory cells are "stacked" on top of each other in layers rather than laid out on a horizontal plane.

This isn't really a buying consideration, beyond being a factor in keeping SSDs cost-effective.

(By stacking cells, density gets increased, while latency and power consumption can be reduced.) You'll see it in the advertising for this drive, though, so it's good to know the context.

(For more SSD lingo explained, see our guide Buying a Solid-State Drive: 20 Terms You Need to Know.)

Furthermore, the ADATA SE730H is one of the few mass-market external SSDs to come with an IP68 rating, an international standard indicating that the device can resist exposure to or immersion in dust, dirt, and sand.

The drive can also be submerged in up to 1.5 meters of water.

To test for this, I soaked the SE730H in my bathroom sink, covering the drive in a few inches of water.

The SE730H survived its 10-minute bath with, of course, the plastic cap sealing the USB port.

I waited for the drive to dry off prior to reconnecting it to my PC.

In this drive's previous iteration, the reviewer criticized the ADATA SE730 ($57.99 at Amazon) for including a cable with a USB Type-C connector on the drive end and a USB Type-A on the system end, without a C-to-C cable in the box as an option.

That's no longer the case now, though you have the opposite "problem," in that you will need an adapter if you only have Type-A ports.

That said, the Type-C connection here supports the USB 3.1 Gen 2 interface, and you do you have the option to buy the drive with either cable standard.

And having USB Type-C means that both sides of the cable are reversible; you don't have to think about which side is up when you're plugging in your SSD in the dark.

What does the Gen 2 mean, specifically? When connected to a compatible Gen 2 port, the SE730H has the potential to move files at a theoretical maximum of 10Gbps.

I emphasize the "theoretical" there, though; let's get into that with some testing.

Let's Transfer Some Data...

Pitting it against three key competitors (the Samsung Portable SSD T5 I mentioned earlier, the SanDisk Extreme 900 Portable SSD , and a drive from WD), the ADATA SE730H proved itself with some feisty, if not field-leading, results in our storage testing.

In UL's (formerly Futuremark's) PCMark 7 Secondary Storage Test, the ADATA SE730H scored 5,145 points...

A widely used "trace"-based benchmark, PCMark 7 is used to measure the speed of a drive by simulating everyday workloads such as video editing, picture manipulation, and program launches.

For reference, the Samsung Portable SSD T5 scored 5,449 points, about 6 percent better.

The other two drives here were behind the ADATA: The SanDisk Extreme 900 Portable SSD scored 4,980 points, while the WD My Passport SSD ($122.33 at Amazon) , another well-regarded external drive, scored 4,640 points, indicating that the SE730H is in the right zone for this benchmark.

See How We Test Hard Drives

I then moved to the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test, formatting the drive for use on a 2016 Apple MacBook Pro.

The testing process simulates moving a 5GB test set from the computer to the drive (write) and from the drive to the computer (read).

Here, the SE730H garnered a write speed of 470.3MBps and a read speed of 510.9MBps...

After that was PC Labs' own drag-and-drop test, in which we move a 1.3GB folder onto the SSD from the Mac desktop.

The SE730H took just 3 seconds.

That's a beat faster than ADATA's non-H SE730 model...

The Samsung Portable SSD T5 took the same amount of time as the SE730H to transfer the folder, while the SanDisk SSD took 5 seconds.

That puts the ADATA SE730H again on par with other external SSDs in its price range.

External Storage With a Bit of Grit

All things considered, the ADATA SE730H External SSD has a lot going for it.

It's small and slender; it doesn't weigh a whole lot; and it resists the most common elements you might throw at it (air, water, and earth for sure; fire, not so much).

As such, the SE730H External SSD is handy for field workers and photographers who need to take their e-gear into adverse weather conditions.

What's more, this external SSD supports a zippy, future-proof interface.

And, to top it all off, the ADATA SE730H (512GB; $149.99) costs less than the Samsung Portable SSD T5 (500GB; $164.99) and the SanDisk Extreme 900 Portable SSD (480GB; $269.99) at similar capacities.

For these reasons, we recommend the ADATA SE730H to anyone seeking a durable, take-anywhere drive for additional storage space in situations that might be a bit more rustic than the norm.

The one downside, such as it is, is that you'll have to settle for 512GB, tops; our Editors' Choice picks from Samsung and SanDisk both come in much larger capacity options.