INTRODUCTION

   Although portable hard drives are more than sufficient to cover people's mobile storage needs (especially thanks to their excellent price/capacity ratio) they don't offer the highest possible read & write performance and with more people (primarily professionals) every day using portable drives to install and run complete operating systems performance has become extremely important. This is also part of the reason as to why recently we've seen a significant spike in the availability of portable solid state drives from a wide range of manufacturers large and small. The Bolt B80 Portable SSD which was released last year proved to be a relatively fast model (review here) but since our friends over at Silicon Power always like to expand their product lines to cover most consumers (both in terms of performance and design/looks) earlier this year they released the Bolt B75 model which is also what today's review is all about.

   Founded in 2003 by a group of enthusiastic data storage industry experts, Silicon Power is committed to delivering outstanding product and service quality. Headquartered and with our own state-of-the-art production site in Taipei, we have become a leading manufacturer of flash memory cards, USB flash drives, portable hard drives, solid state drives, DRAM modules and industrial-grade products. As an international player with four branch offices around the globe, we continuously strive to offer the perfect data storage solution for all requirements of modern digitalized life. With a strong focus on combining innovative technology and award-winning design, we live up to our brand promise to reliably preserve and protect your most valuable data. Because memory is personal.

   Although the Bolt B80 had a UFO like design the team behind the Bolt B75 took design ideas from the German Junkers F 13 all-metal transport aircraft so these two models look nothing alike (personally i like the B80 more). The aluminum enclosure of the Bolt B75 is shock proof (MIL-STD-810, 516.7 Procedure IV), scratch resistant and offers superior heat dissipation while the drive itself is currently available in 120/240/480/960GB capacities and features a type-C to USB connection (USB 3.1 Gen 1) which allows it to achieve performance numbers of up to 440MB/s read and 430MB/s write (always according to Silicon Power). Last but not least Silicon Power covers the entire Bolt B75 line with a 3 year limited warranty.

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

PACKAGING AND CONTENTS

The drive gets shipped inside a white box that has a clear plastic section at the front from where you can see the drive.

Printed at the rear are the product features, specifications, system requirements and the package contents.

Just the user manual is bundled with the Bolt B75 Portable SSD and its USB to USB Type-C braided cable.

THE BOLT B75 240GB

The aluminum body of the Bolt B75 measures 124.4mm in length, 82mm in width and 12.2mm in height/thickness.

Here you can see just how larger the Bolt B75 is compared to both the T3 and T1 models by Samsung (in all fairness however most of the interior of the B75 is empty).

The activity LED is located at the lower end of the enclosure right next to the company logo and above the Type-C USB port.

Printed on the base of the enclosure are the drive capacity and several certifications.

TEST BED

TESTING METHODOLOGY

   Solid state drives are basically the same as USB flash drives and so we’re using almost the same testing methodology to successfully record achieved read & write performance numbers in our charts*. The benchmark suites used are HD Tach RW (Read Speeds / Long Bench 32mb Zone Testing), HD Tune Pro (Read speeds), Sisoftware Sandra Pro (Read / Write speeds), AIDA 64 Engineer Edition (Average Linear Read / Random Read speeds), Crystal Disk Mark x64 (100MB-1000MB Read / Write speeds) and finally ATTO (Max Read / Max Write speeds). Every test is repeated a total of 6 times after which the average performance numbers are recorded into our charts (0 = we were unable to complete that test).

   All tests are performed with our main rig running Microsoft Windows 10 Pro installation on a HyperX Predator 480GB PCIe SSD with all updates installed up to the 10th of December 2018. As always for comparison purposes in the charts you will also find many other flash drivers which have been tested using the same exact test bench as the one in this review (we really can't keep every flash drive we get forever and also even if we could testing them all again and again would simply not be possible).

* Since November 2018 we started new charts only for portable solid state drives.

TEST RESULTS - AIDA64 / ATTO

TEST RESULTS - HD TACH RW / HD TUNE PRO

TEST RESULTS - SISOFTWARE SANDRA PRO / CRYSTAL DISK MARK X64

CONCLUSION

   Just like many times in the past with similar reviews our charts tell us pretty much everything we need to know about the product in our hands and in this particular case things could be better. True we don’t have many portable SSDs currently in our charts (we are however working on 3 more reviews at the time I type these lines) but the Bolt B75 is clearly the slowest model of them all and although still much faster compared to “regular” portable hard drives (we did manage to surpass 400MB/s in some tests) still its brother the Bolt B80 seems like a better choice overall. That being said its aluminum enclosure may be more important than performance to some people but those would be the exceptions and not the rule.

   We were hoping that the Bolt B75 240GB would have a more affordable price tag attached to it compared to the Bolt B80 240GB and since it currently sells for USD87.49 inside the USA (Newegg) and for 73.68Euros inside the EU (Amazon DE) we were right on the spot. With that out of the way although there will definitely be consumers who will choose their pockets over performance still the Bolt B75 is the slowest SSD to pass from out test bench to date. That being said even though the Bolt B75 is not award winning material we still recommend checking it out if you’re one such consumer, besides let's not forget that at the end of the day it's still much faster than any portable hard drive.

PROS

- Build Quality (Aluminum Enclosure)
- Good Overall Performance (Compared To PHDs)
- AES 256 Encryption
- Just 12.2mm Thick
- 3 Years Warranty
- Price (For Some)

CONS

- Overall Performance (Compared To Other Portable SSDs)
- Size (For Some)