Cavalry Storage Pelican 64GB External SSD Review

Conclusion

Before we get too far into this conclusion, let's just spill the beans: If you are looking for an internal OS drive, the Pelican is easily the worst possible option of the SSDs we have reviewed. Admittedly, our list of reviewed SSDs is quite short and we have been fairly choosy in which drives we look at, but the sad fact is this drive as about as out dated and weak an SSD as we have seen. To get worse than this we would probably have to look at some of the non 2.5” from factor early gen netbook drives which had infamously poor performance. Indeed, if you are seriously looking at the Pelican you might as well ignore the fact it has SATA power and data ports and think of these as (nearly) non-functioning accessories.

If this was a normal storage review this is where the story would end…and what a sorry story it would be. Fortunately, and as we said in the beginning of this review, the Pelican’s main claim to fame is the integrated mini-USB port. As an external USB storage device it’s a pretty good one, not as good as some external storage solutions we have reviewed in the past but certainly better than darn near any USB thumb-drive out there. . It really is stuck in the middle with some good features and some bad. If size nor having a power brick are not factors in your decision making process, this device is not for you. If however, you need storage capacities greater than a thumb-drive can offer and / or need increased performance the Pelican just may be the perfect addition to your road warrior load out. I know that there are many times when slipping an extra 2.5 SSD into an extra pocket of my laptop bag would have been a god send as it took numerous (and S-L-O-W) drives to carry all the data from point A to B.

When looked at in this light, the SATA capabilities can be considered a secondary function, not something we would pay extra for, but a nice bonus none the less. The Pelican plus a hot swap 2.5 caddy in a 5.25 bay adapter to “quickly” load large chunks of data in your main system and then the USB to access it from a laptop on the road, may actually make a good combination. In the end, only you can decide if this device is exceptional, less than exceptional or a down right terrible choice for your needs. In our case, we can see the occasional need for it, but truly don’t know if it would be money well spent.


Pros:

- Very good USB performance (better than thumb drives, less so than dedicated external storage solutions)
- Low power usage
- Good external storage solution for “road warriors”
- Integrated USB


Cons:

- Price
- Potentially slow writes
- Extensive Stutter problems
- Exposed SATA data and power connectors (no covers / plugs included)
- Short USB cable included