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Lacie this week introduced the LaCie Rugged SSD Pro5, an SSD that uses the latest Thunderbolt 5 technology for faster transfer speeds. Apple's newest M4 Macs are equipped with Thunderbolt 5 ports that are able to take advantage of the speeds of Thunderbolt 5 accessories.

lacie-rugged-thunderbolt-5-ssd.jpg

According to LaCie, the SSD is aimed at filmmakers, photographers, and audio specialists. The SSD delivers read speeds of up to 6700MB/s, and write speeds up to 5300MB/s. It can be purchased in capacities up to 4TB.

The Rugged SSD Pro5 features IP68 dust and water resistance, which means it can withstand submersion in water. The durability makes it ideal for workflows that involve travel, and it can withstand drops from up to three meters high.

While designed for Thunderbolt 5 machines, the SSD Pro5 works with Thunderbolt 5, Thunderbolt 4, and USB 10/20/40Gb/s USB-C hosts on Macs, the iPad Pro, and Windows machines.

A 2TB version of the LaCie Rugged SSD Pro5 is available for $400, while a 4TB model is priced at $600.

Article Link: LaCie Launches Thunderbolt 5 SSD
 
Lacie is always being premium and also unreasonably expensive.
For people who are potential customers for TB5 SSD, just wait for enclosure coming out from companies like acasis (they already have one model available, but that is also overpriced for now), you will get full performance, more flexibility and much better price.
 
New product ought to have a 6TB option available, it is 2025.

Why? Why should every new product be offered at the more expensive tier? It’s not as if larger drives don’t exist, just with a different name.

Seperate enclosure and drive are almost always a better buy

Depends on the purpose. It makes less if:
1. You’re paying your IT department $100/hr to build and maintain it at an unpredictable cost.
2. You have a budget that you can’t exceed (no warranty on enclosures, technically the cost could be infinite).
3. You don’t have the technical skills/confidence.
4. Any combination of the above.

But I agree, for the skilled home user they will almost always save money building it themselves.
 
Lacie is always being premium and also unreasonably expensive.
For people who are potential customers for TB5 SSD, just wait for enclosure coming out from companies like acasis (they already have one model available, but that is also overpriced for now), you will get full performance, more flexibility and much better price.
$600 is not expensive if you are using this for real work. What do you think it costs to generate the video data to fill even a 1TB drive?

The calculation is very different for consumers who want to store downloaded media and professionals who create the media.
 
$600 is not expensive if you are using this for real work. What do you think it costs to generate the video data to fill even a 1TB drive?

The calculation is very different for consumers who want to store downloaded media and professionals who create the media.
I call it expensive not based on how much value/money people can get with it. It is only based on comparison between same or similar products which can basically do the same thing. In this case, Lacie TB5 SSD Vs upcoming TB5 enclosure+M.2 NVME PCIE 4.0 SSD
 
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Lacie this week introduced the LaCie Rugged SSD Pro5, an SSD that uses the latest Thunderbolt 5 technology for faster transfer speeds.
Meanwhile, the latest iPhone 16 is still only USB 2.0:
 
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All in one solutions as such this and ones from owc are proving to be more robust these days.

Lots of issues with heat, performance and compatability with many combinations when choosing your own drive and chassis.
I like the OWC TB5 Envoy but I despise the integrated cable. That is a point of wear and failure, and being able to choose your specific cable length can be important. Also drives without integrated cables are more portable and require less fuss to pack. The OWC has also been shown to throttle back to 1500MB/s after writing 50GB to its cache.

Heat is far less an issue in devices that have an available fan in-chassis.

I personally got impatient waiting for more TB5 devices and enclosures to enter the market so I ordered ACASIS TBU501 for my 4TB hp fx900pro ssd. This combo should at least match any TB5 storage on the market today.

I'm definitely happy to see more TB5 storage enter the market, but I don' t think this particular one would change my mind unless I needed it TODAY and was standing next to one on a store shelf.

A combination of enclosure + SSD yields not only savings for me today (my combo total is $439 for 4TB) it protects me in the future when either product reaches end of life before the other, as well as if repurpose the 4TB and place 8TB in the enclosure. My SSD has a great 5-year 2400TBW warranty, and I'm very confident in ACASIS products even though it only offers 1 year through its online store.
 
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I like the OWC TB5 Envoy but I despise the integrated cable. That is a point of wear and failure, and being able to choose your specific cable length can be important. Also drives without integrated cables are more portable and require less fuss to pack. The OWC has also been shown to throttle back to 1500MB/s after writing 50GB to its cache.
You can change the cable in the OWC enclosures.

It's just inside the chassis with a grommet for better IP rating.

What I find more interesting is that all these solutions happens to start at the same $400 for the 2TB version and $600 for the 4TB version, whether it is LaCie Rugged SSD Pro5, OWC Envoy Ultra or Rocket XTRM 5.
 
Seperate enclosure and drive are almost always a better buy
Most don't handle heat well, Acasis included (the fan model too). They heat up even at idle.

Having said that, wouldn't get an overpriced LaCie either. Hopefully Samsung steps up with a good one.
 
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Bring much higher capacity of 16 TB and 32 TB. Technology allows that already. Expensive? Yes, I know.
 
You can pick up a USB enclosure and a 2TB NVMe drive for 185 bucks total. No need to pay over the odds for an unnoticeable extra speed bump.
But is it Rugged and can stand immersion in water?
You can pick up a USB enclosure and a 2TB NVMe drive for 185 bucks total. No need to pay over the odds for an unnoticeable extra speed bump.
 
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This is a great option for 99% of users with normal needs and all the special cases have other options.
I am sure LaCie will sell a ton of these. 👍🏻
 
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