Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Slim Portable External Hard Drive review – CNET

The Good The Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Slim is compact, fast and includes helpful backup software.

The Bad There’s no USB-C port, so no future-proofing for you.

The Bottom Line The Backup Plus Ultra Slim is a handy portable drive for those needing to carry additional data or perform backups on the go.

Seagate’s Backup Plus Ultra Slim is a slimmer, faster version of the Backup Plus Slim portable hard drive we first reviewed in 2014 and is ultimately a better buy than its older brother. The Ultra Slim is the Chris Hemsworth to the Slim’s Luke Hemsworth. Who is Luke Hemsworth, you ask? Exactly.

The included Seagate Dashboard software not only lets you back up drive data, but your mobile devices and social media (Facebook, Flickr and YouTube) info as well. I had no issues with the software, but truth be told, I only used the Windows version. There’s a separate version for Mac that I didn’t test. You also get 200GB of online storage (free for two years) with Microsoft Onedrive. If you use Windows 10, though, I’d recommend using the built-in File History utility for local backups, among other things you won’t need to install any extra software on the computer.

CNET USB 3.0 portable drive performance

Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Slim

149.6

169.21

Seagate Backup Plus Slim

118.8

125.35

Buffalo MiniStation Extreme

110.3

118.82

WD My Passport Ultra

110.2

117.34

WD My Password Slim

107.7

107.89

SiliconPower Armor A60

104.3

114.48

WD Elements

95.7

102.15

Legend:

Write
Read

Note:

Longer bars mean better performance

While the micro-USB 3.0 port is fast for transfers, I was disappointed that there’s no USB-C port. So despite being available in gold (and silver) it won’t work with a Macbook — the Macbook has only a single USB-C port and currently comes in gold, silver and a few other colors.

The drive’s handy portability makes it perfect for all laptops not named Macbook (I’m talking solely about the single-port USB-C version here). The drive works out of the box with most computers, thanks to the included USB 3.0 cable. However, if you plan to use it with a non-Macbook Mac laptop or desktop, you’ll need to reformat it first.