The new Lexar ARMOR 700 is the latest in the brand’s lineup of USB 3.2 Gen 2×2-compatible, USB-C portable SSDs. It lands with a focus on content-creators, wrapped inside of a rugged shell and speeds rated up to 2,000MB/s. We were lucky enough to give the drive a go for the last couple weeks and you’ll find our hands-on impressions of the Apple ProRes-ready solution down below as part of the latest in our Tested with gadgetnewsonline series.
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Hands-on with the new Lexar ARMOR 700 SSD
The new Lexar ARMOR 700 comes in a 1TB and 2TB model with a black colorway starting from $149.99 (on sale for $120 right now) or a blue 2TB model you’ll find at Amazon for $199.99.
Features at a glance
- USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 performance of 2000MB/s max read/write speeds
- Rated IP66 to protect against both water and dust
- Supports Apple Pro Res recording – shoot directly to the drive in up to 4K 60FPS
- Thermal Control Design ensures optimal temperatures even at top speeds
- Compatible with PC, Mac, Android, iPhone 15 series, cameras, gaming consoles, and more
- Includes a Type-C and USB-A all-in-one cable
- Includes Lexar DataShield, a 256-bit AES encryption advanced security solution
gadgetnewsonline’ Take
The new Lexar ARMOR 700 made its debut back in June as the latest entry in the brand’s lineup of portable storage devices. It, like many of the latest releases in the product category, was positioned as a rugged solution that can withstand the elements, tumbling around in your bag, and potentially some drops and falls. It is rated with an IP66 a dust- and water- resistance and a frame than can handle up to 3-meter (or nearly 10-foot) drops.
The whole thing is wrapped in a sort of hard rubber plastic (slightly less of a dust magnet than some, but not perfect) with exposed metal end plates. Do I wish there was a cover for the USB-C port? Yes. Do most of the big brands not do this for some reason? Yes, just about all of them and don’t ask me why.
The drive itself measures out at 54.4mm by 13.2mm high and 86.2mm long.
I am not crazy enough to purposefully get it wet, or drop it 10 feet onto the hardwood floors or anything, but I did give it a go. I took the drive out shooting video on iPhone 15 Pro in slightly rainy conditions, as well as at the beach – no issues there at all. It was also gutsy enough to give a good nearly 6-foot free fall on to a thin area rug…no issues there at all either. It’s definitely going to be able to handle slight mishaps, and potentially even worse than that. Do I recommend purposefully dropping any portable SSD into the lake or from the 10 feet it is rated for onto concrete? No I do not. But I wouldn’t be surprised if this could handle some light water exposure and a good tumble or two.
Another thing this drive, and many of the latest releases, are being marketed for as of late is the ability to immediately work on multiple platforms and, more specifically allow iPhone 15 Pro users to shoot 4K Apple Pro-Res video directly on iPhone to the drive.
I can confirm the drive has worked flawlessly for me over the last couple weeks on two different Mac systems – a Mac mini and MacBook Air, as well as my iPhone 15 Pro.
I can also confirm that it worked with the Apple Pro Res action straight out of the box on iPhone 15 – no re-formatting needed. You simply connect the drive to your iPhone 15 over USB-C, turn on the ProRes capture option in the Camera settings menu if it isn’t already, hit the ProRes option when you open the camera app to begin shooting, and done. It all just works, immediately capturing the video straight onto the drive, side-stepping your iPhone’s internal storage altogether. You can then disconnect the drive from your iPhone, jack it in to your Mac, and the footage is there waiting to be ingested into Final Cut or whatever editing suite you use.
Again it has been a flawless process that required zero expertise, and just all worked the first time with no finagling, re-formatting, or otherwise.
Now let’s talk speed. As anyone who is familiar with the marketed speed ratings on portable SSDs (or any storage medium) likely already knows, the drive can only hit those data rates under the utmost of ideal conditions – the cables, the ports, the computer, and so on.
This is is why I like to leave my portable SSD reviews with a real-world example of how fast the data transfers were for me, as opposed to a giant chart worth of speed data that means very little to all but the most professional of users that likely already know what they are getting into anyway. So here goes.
When transferring a 33GB folder, full of various documents, audio files, pictures, and video clips, from an M2 Mac mini (an arguably quite universal and modest machine with Thunderbolt 4 ports) over a Thunderbolt cable, it took exactly 11 minutes and 31 seconds. That’s not crazy fast or anything, but again it is likely a more realistic impression of what you’re looking at here with a traditional consumer cable and relatively average computer system.
While I’m clearly not super interested in it, here’s a look at the Black Magic Disk Speed Test results:
In the end, there’s nothing overly special or remarkable about the Lexar ARMOR 700 Portable SSD – it just does what it says on the tin. And sometimes with storage devices like this, that’s really all you need. They just have to work, work well, and work reliably. And that’s what we are getting here.
I’m personally not a huge fan of the aesthetics here – it’s not quite as cool looking as some of the Samsung models out there, and I hate the giant Lexar logo on the front, but it’s fine. No big deal right? It just needs to work, and that it very much does.
It is a solid option for folks looking to shoot some video on iPhone without hogging up the storage capacity, and makes for a solid backup device across just about any piece of kit you have with a USB-C jack.
Buy the Lexar ARMOR 700 Portable SSD
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