LaCie Porsche Design USB Key 32GB review

The LaCie Porsche Design USB Key is a slim and narrow USB3 drive that’s made from steel. The drive feels tough and hardy, but the contacts are exposed, which makes us worry about damaging them. As the drive bears the Porsche logo you’d expect it to be fast, but it wasn’t astoundingly quick in our tests.

Its large file read speed was certainly swift, with the Porsche Design USB Key providing a data transfer speed of 89.9MB/s, but its large file write speed was a lowly 15.8MB/s. The drive wrote small files at 5.4MB/s and a read them at 17.9MB/s. The Kingston Datatraveler HyperX 3.0 provided much higher data transfer speeds in these tests.

We also tested the Porsche Design USB Key in a USB2 port, where it produced a large file write speed of 11.4MB/s, a large file read speed of 33.2MB/s, a small file write speed of 4.3MB/s and a small file read speed of 12.25MB/s. With the exception of the large file read speed, these transfer speeds are pretty close to those produced when its plugged into a USB 3 port.

The Porsche Design Key USB’s performance doesn’t live up to the brand name emblazoned on it. However, it looks great, it’s slim and fans of the brand should be pleased with it. The drive also comes with 32GB of Wuala online storage, but despite this it’s still very expensive for a 32GB drive. If you need faster performance and don’t mind paying more for it then buy the Kingston Datatraveler HyperX 3.0 64GB instead.